I legit had this SI edition as a kid! No idea what happened to it but man what a time to be alive!

34 comments

1. I still have this edition as well as the one where McGwire breaks the record.

2. Mcgwires forearms 👀

3. I can smell the steroids oozing from this picture.

4. I still have myn. McGwire and Sosa saved baseball

5. Maybe your SI edition secretly became the key to saving baseball! It’s got superpowers!

6. sammy is looking great on the left. no idea who that is in the right. and where’s mark?! what a weird cover.

7. It’s crazy to think how popular they were! now you hardly ever see them or hear about them

8. I used to take andro back in high school during this time. That stuff and a ripped fuel pill and everything looks like a beach ball coming in.

9. Look at those juicey juicers…it’s almost like you can see the steroids pumping through their oversized bodies 🤤

10. Cheater 1. Cheater 2.

11. The amount of roids in this photo

12. Bring back steroids! Such a great time for fans watching moonshots!

13. I was about 5 years into my career at that time, and every day in the break room it was “Dude, Sosa just hit another one!” or “Mac just tied it up!” or whatever. It was such a fun summer for baseball.

14. Hell yeah the 90s MLB was the best! Guys like Brady Anderson hit 50 dingers in a season lmao. Was indeed a good time to be a kid watching baseball.

15. Not for me, I was born June of that year.

16. Now both are white…so weird lol

17. Peak of baseball.

18. Isn’t Sammy Sosa white now?

19. Barry Bonds saw this cover and got absolutely pissed. He was like ‘alright mother fuckers, is this how it’s going to be’. By 1999, he began to go on the juice and really showed people who the HNIC was.

20. My Dad met Mark McGwire at some convention in the late 80s, before the roids. (At least I believe it was before them.) My Dad is 6’0, 240, and built like a tank. He has forearms like Popeye.. Played division 1 basketball in college… and he said McGwire was the most enormous human being he’d ever seen.

    I can’t even imagine seeing him up close and in person after years of juicing.

21. Embarrassing photo of those two clowns. Those two and Palmiero were pathetic in the Senate hearings regarding steroids.

22. Has a SI cover ever aged as horribly as this one did?

23. I’ve got the Houston chronicle cover when McGwire broke the record the 1st time that year. I was in 3rd grade and told my Dad to save it and I can sell it for “like a million bucks” when I got big…. Well I’m big now who wants to write that check?? 😂😂😂

24. Had the choice to take Nephews to 1998 Godzilla premiere or the Phillies vs Cardinals. I chose Godzilla. McGwire hit 3 homers. Oops.

25. McGwire was, and still is, my all time favorite baseball player. I was 18 during the summer of ‘98 and was glued to the TV watching SportsCenter every day and night to see the highlights of the great home run chase. Most exciting season of baseball IMO. I’ll never forget the moment when he hit the line drive over the left field wall for #62.

    I totally get why some folks hate on him and Sammy, I can’t really argue against it either, even though PEDs were rampant in baseball and other sports at that time. But he’s always been a tremendous supporter of the local communities he’s played in, donated millions to help abused animals and missing/abused children (if memory serves me correctly).

    He still has the best HR:AB ratio of any player in history AFAIK…

    Growing up I lived and breathed baseball. I still have over 20k baseball cards stowed away from my collecting days. I have around 200 McGwire cards all in hard plastic cases, unfortunately the value has likely tanked over the years, I haven’t even looked at them in probably a decade. This thread has made me want to go back and check them out again for old times sake.

26. Ah yes, McGwire and young LeBron

27. Both deserve to be in the hall along with others like Bonds. Some of the best sluggers of our generation. MLB knew about the roids for many years. These batters faced pitchers on the same roids and whats wild is there’s others already in the hall who used roids. So why not these guys?

    Fuck the shitters that vote for it like a popularity contest and excluded so many great athletes.

28. I was such a massive fan of baseball during the “steroid era” I used to look at the news paper every single morning and quickly flip to the sports page to see the HR count between mac and Sosa . They put baseball back on the map shortly after the lockout .

29. I was working at a convenience store that year and every day people would walk in and look at the USA Today and ask “did they hit any yesterday?”

30. Holy cow! Sammy Sosa was black???!

31. Baseball was better then and I am tired of pretending it wasn’t.

32. r/baseballcirclejerk

33. The cheatingest time in all of sports! Lol what a fuckin joke! I bet you play softball every night and tournaments every weekend with your newest shaved and rolled bat that lets you actually hit a ball over 300’! Lol people who worship sports make me laugh. It’s all fucking rigged and corrupt! Lol.

34. Forearms two balls