Just as many kids growing up in the late-80's and 90's, I had a huge collection of baseball cards. This was a few years before it began to cost more for a pack of cards than it did for a gallon of milk. It was also when people collected ball-cards in hopes they would be lucky enough to pull out a card of their childhood hero.
We didn't seem to notice that some of our favorite players had gained 30 pounds, looking more like body builders instead of baseball players. Considering this was around the same time the rest of America began putting on pounds, maybe we all assumed it was natural?
Looking back now, in many ways, the evidence of performance enhancing drugs in baseball was right in front of our eyes. We just didn't want to see it, and if we did, we turned a blind-eye to it.
These guys were our heroes, and we enjoyed watching them play the game. Why would we want to think they were doing something wrong? More importantly, how can we even blame them?
I am glad that the game is once again clean(er), but it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy watching it when it wasn't. I am a baseball fan, plain and simple, and there is a certain excitement in watching a guy take a baseball thrown 94 mph and seeing him smack it 450 feet.
It's not my job to judge others, so I take it for what it was—a different era of baseball. An era where 50+ homer seasons were a given, and where many long-lasting records were shattered. To be honest, I enjoyed every minute of it.
Out of the combined 129 players that either showed up in the Mitchell Report, admitted to using PED's, were suspended by MLB for testing positive, or have been implicated as being users, you'd be surprised to know that a majority of them were not household names.
For the most part, it was a player trying to gain the "edge" that would take them from being a role player to being a star. That being said, there were also those "users" who were already considered to be good players, and they changed the future of baseball by wanting to be great.
For the sake of this list, I only used players who have had actual connections to PED's. Feel free to add your own names to the list, as it will undoubtedly grow over time.
Without further adieu, I give you the Top 20 Sluggers on Steroids.
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