Through a series of engaging and hard-hitting columns, seamlessly merged into 18 chapters of the book Juicing The Game: Drugs, Power, And the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, Boston Herald columnist Howard Bryant explains how baseball officials from 1994 to 2004 turned a blind eye to the obvious use of steroids among ballplayers.

The signs included the following :

• The hated New York Yankees - who couldn't win their division in '95 and '97 and were a wild card team both years - were dominating the game again, with 125 wins under their belts.

• St. Louis slugger Mark McGwire was making a devastating assault on Yankee legend Roger Maris' home run record, with Cubby rival Sammy Sosa in hot pursuit.

• Disillusioned fans were once again filling the nation's ballparks, feeling the same magic reserved for football and basketball, as a captivated nation fell in love with the game and its players all over again.

It was the late 1990s, and after the devastating 1994 baseball strike, fans' interest in American's favorite pastime was on the upswing. Besieged baseball commissioner Bud Selig (who had been accused of using gimmicks to draw fans) was feeling good about baseball's renaissance. And then it all came crashing down. Enter the Crusaders - a "group of professional scientists, doctors and anti-doping executives who had begun to pressure the governing bodies of various sports to examine the larger implications and consequences of doping."

Their concerns were echoed by those of skeptical players such as pitcher Curt Schilling, a baseball traditionalist and historian who was convinced that steroids were not only prevalent but had undermined the game's balance, and journalists like Associated Press reporter Steve Wilstein, who noticed a bottle of androstenedione - a male hormone that builds muscle mass - stored in Mark McGwire's locker.

The slugger admitted using the controversial dietary drug, which mirrors the effects of steroids. But, ah, there's the rub: Was it something to worry about?

Juicing The Game is not only an insightful examination of baseball's steroid abuse, but the book also demonstrates that Bryant is a student of baseball history. He punctuates his work with anecdotes, interviews with other journalists, baseball players and league officials, including Selig, Fay Vincent, Reggie Jackson and Jason Giambi.

The book is an excellent primer for hard-core baseball fans, as well as for casual readers who are interested in the anatomy of steroid use in baseball.

At first, Bryant writes, no one wanted to acknowledge a problem - and with good reason.

"In the commissioner's office," Bryant writes, "Bud Selig was in something of a panic. The great season was threatening to be undone. His response would be echoed through the corridors of virtually every office throughout Major League Baseball: What the hell was this stuff? Nobody knew, and at that moment, with baseball enjoying its biggest comeback in a generation, few were truly interested in finding out."

Bryant details the growing crisis with skill. Circling the wagons, the Players Association and Selig acknowledged that androstenedione, better known as andro, was illegal in the NFL and the Olympics. However, it was legal in Major League Baseball. In fact, the supplement was available over the counter at any neighborhood health store.

Then, several years later, baseball-great-turned-whistle-blower Jose Canseco admitted using steroids in his scathing book Juiced, which fueled this year's congressional hearing on the use of steroids by professional baseball players.

Bryant notes that Canseco's teammates had nicknamed him "The Chemist" because of his well-known experimentation with anabolic substances.

The first professional baseball player to admit he was using steroids, Canseco's testimony "tore through the big leagues," Bryant writes. "Inside the game, he had become Judas. He violated the ancient baseball code that declared that what happens in the clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse. Worse, Canseco's allegations, coming in the wake of his retirement, turned the focus away from himself toward the active players."

Canseco's allegations put a damper on Barry Bonds' trek to become baseball's home run king. The one-man wrecking crew who was approaching Babe Ruth's and Hammerin' Hank Aaron's all-time home run records solidified the fact by admitting to the San Francisco Chronicle that he unknowingly took steroids.

"Bonds stood as the symbol of the tainted era, of its bitter contradictions and the great consequences," Bryant writes.

After Canseco's book was released, retired San Diego MVP Ken Caminiti further fueled the fire by telling Sports Illustrated that he had used anabolic steroids during his career.

Selig's stubbornness and refusal to accept the truth, confront and accept responsibility for steroid use was his greatest failure as commissioner, Bryant writes. As a consequence, Selig will forever be known as the man who presided over the steroid era.

In the final analysis, Bryant shows little sympathy for Selig. He concludes that it will be steroids, and not his attempts to invigorate the game, that will define the commissioner's tenure during baseball's answer to Watergate.

But Bryant is more sympathetic to the game itself. Baseball, he concedes, will survive - as it always has.

Laurence Washington is the co-publisher/ editor of Blackflix.com and teaches journalism at Metropolitan State College of Denver.