Andrew Zimbalist with a devastating review of the new Howard Bryant book on 'roids.

In "Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball," Howard Bryant suggests that Selig and his lieutenants were well aware that these players were taking steroids, but they refused to rain on baseball's parade. Baseball's recovery was too fragile and the excitement was too intoxicating.

That's an outline of the argument in Bryant's 400-page book. The story of steroids and baseball is certainly worth telling, and Bryant has told much of it reasonably well. In the end, though, Bryant tells a meandering, incomplete, distorted and tendentious tale.

One basic problem is Bryant plays fast and loose with his numbers and sources. ...

Bryant ends his book in a messianic tone. Not only does the steroid issue lose all ambiguity, it undoes all the gains baseball has made since 1995. He writes: "The speed with which Selig and his unassailable decade have come completely undone is stunning." Again, Bryant lacks evidence. In 2005, baseball is setting all-time attendance records.