The Steroid Era

On the early September night that Mark McGwire hit number sixty two, I was in the sun room, walls of windows surrounding me, squinting through the glare as he came to bat with two outs in the fourth inning. It was his shortest homer of the season, barely hurtling over the left field fence, not even reaching the stands. I leapt off the couch, sprinted upstairs and told my mom to turn on the TV.  

We'd been following the numbers in the Times every summer morning, not sure why it mattered so much if a beefy redhead jogged around the bases more times than an old Yankee whom fame and adulation have mysteriously eluded. It mattered because the papers said so, and because the late nineties were about saucy interns instead of collapsing towers.

Years later, I watched McGwire make a fool out of himself in front of congress. He wasn't there to talk about the past, he said, ignorant that his past and present could harm his future. He is a pariah. A public enemy. A joke.

September 11, 2001 was a striking visual of many things that have happened to quaint ideas of the nineties. This is where the laissez-faire approach to international affairs, to business regulation, to real estate, to steroid testing have brought us. The greatest risks have sown the seeds of catastrophic failures.

But even as the bloated era withers before our eyes, let's not forget its small joys. Let's remember what it was like to feel optimistic, to revel in calm before the storm. Let's sit in the sun room on a darkening September evening and honor the spring and summer that came before, and will surely come again.