Show Notes
What happens when your love of a sport is built on a major-league lie? Sportswriter Joan Niesen was a kid in St. Louis in the summer of 1998, when the home run race made baseball magic. Mark McGwire was her favorite player, and she tracked his every move that season as he chased baseball immortality. But the spectacle of that summer was not what it seemed. McGwire and countless other players had been using anabolic steroids for years. Now, Joan is revisiting the steroid era to untangle the truth from its many myths and search for answers. What happens when our heroes let us down? What can those years tell us about sports culture in America? And what is the legacy of baseball’s farthest-reaching scandal?
More from ROS Presents: Counterattack
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The National Women’s Soccer league launches, creating new opportunities for elite female soccer players, including Sinead Farrelly, Michelle Betos and newcomer Mana Shim. But the imbalance of power and lack of oversight that defined previous leagues persists; coaches remain powerful and unaccountable gatekeepers. Sinead vows to take her and Paul’s secret to the grave, but it leads her down a path of self-destruction. At the same time, Paul pulls the same moves on a new player — but she has no intention of keeping quiet.
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