In the game of baseball, dreaming big, working hard and showing individual effort in an atmosphere of teamwork and fair play are all American ideals. These ideals hide the realities of drug abuse, and fixed games, just like these dreams hide the ugly reality in America that not everyone who dreams and works hard succeeds. In Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big, major leager Jose Canseco chronicles his experience as a professional player for Major League Baseball. An unapologetic user of steroids to enhance his sport, Canseco claims that drug use can be managed by a physician to improve players' game and raise the bar of the sport itself. To Canseco, steroid use is not the problem when all players have access to safe steroids and doctor-managed regimes of performance-enhancing drugs. In Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, Howard Bryant offers a more critical perspective of the steroid crisis in Major League Baseball (MLB). Writing as a member of the sports media rather than as an athlete, Bryant's perspective is far different from that of Canseco but no less compelling. Baseball is big business; more than just a game, the sport is financed at least in part by the media and its commercial interests. Therefore, Bryant's input is every bit as valuable as Canseco's. Both Canseco and Bryant value the American Dream and equal access to it. Their ethics, however, differ greatly.
             To Canseco, steroids are a legitimate means to the same end: success and perfection. An athlete cannot just dream big. He or she must take decisive steps toward the fulfillment of that dream. In the competitive environment of professional sports, athletes have to do all they can to stay on top of their sport. If one competitor is availing himself or herself of performance-enhancing drugs then that individual raises the bar for the other players. Unfortunately, once a performance-enhanc...