After a bitter strike in 1994, baseball team owners needed something big to get fans back in the ballparks. Then, along came Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, and their prayers were answered. Their home run duel filled seats and brought baseball back from the brink.

Yet, there was more to this story. Those monster blasts out of the park from McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, and others had some people questioning their new-found power. There were rumors of steroids. Then came the Balco lab investigation, and a confession from Jose Conseco that he used steroids and that he wasn’t the only one. Congress held hearings and Major League Baseball vowed to clean up its act.

Hear from some of the best baseball minds in the country on how clean 21st century baseball really can be in this age of performance enhancing options.

Guests:

Howard Bryant, sports columnist for The Boston Herald, author of “Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball”

Lance Williams, investigative reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle

Huntington Willard, director of Duke University’s Institute for Genome Science and Policy

Tim Kurkjian, covers baseball for ESPN and regular contributor to NPR’s “Only a Game”

Jack Beatty, On Point News Analyst, senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly