Crushed – Meghan Coyle

I was a production assistant on Crushed, a seven-episode narrative podcast on the steroid-era in baseball. The show ranked in the top 10 of Apple’s sports podcasts category. We also adapted it into a one-hour broadcast special, which aired on NPR affiliates in summer 2021, and a special episode for The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal podcast.

Sportswriter Joan Niesen was a kid in St. Louis in the summer of 1998, when the home run race made baseball magic. But the spectacle of that summer was not what it seemed. What happens when your love of a sport is built on a major-league lie?

When reporter Steve Wilstein started asking questions about a bottle of pills in Mark McGwire’s locker, it set off a chain reaction that would cast doubt on the home run record and the power that had come to define baseball.

At the height of the steroid era, players across baseball had to decide if they should use—and reap the benefits—or stay clean. We meet two such players and follow the ripple effects of their choices.

Baseball has always had a murky code of ethics, a rulebook that feels more like a suggestion. Did that culture pave the way for steroids? And, in baseball and in life, where do we draw the line between advancement and cheating?

In the years after Barry Bonds was crowned home run king, baseball’s steroid problem became too big to ignore. Fans began to look for someone to blame, a villain—but truth and accountability remained elusive.

In 2005, Congress forced star athletes and baseball leadership to finally confront their steroid problem in a hearing on Capitol Hill that was broadcast on national television.

Baseball still feels the aftershocks of the steroid era. Has it recovered, or has it just forgotten and moved on? And what happens when a sport that’s built on nostalgia ignores its own history.