Go ahead. Try to find somebody who doesn’t remember the exhilarating 1998 single season home run record chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. No, your 12-year-old stepbrother doesn’t count.

I still remember sitting on the floor Indian style directly in front of the screen eagerly anticipating the next home run to be hit. “America’s Pastime” was at its prime, and unfortunately, so were steroids.

It’s no secret that baseball is a competitive sport. The all-around competitive nature of it has pushed athletes of late to the edge, turning to performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and steroids to give them that extra push.

This has given way to the “Steroid Era,” the period between the late 1980s and early 2000s where steroids became an epidemic. Players such as Mike Piazza, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens were gaining popularity in the wrong way, appearing in front of judges and on the cover of newspapers.

Of course, MLB and the media have made it very clear that steroids are not a subject to be taken lightly. Recently, members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who determine Hall of Fame induction, declined to welcome any player from the “Steroid Era” to Cooperstown, N.Y., where baseball’s Hall of Fame is located.

The problem, though, is that steroids were not banned until 1991. And they didn’t even start testing for them until 2003.

If we are going to be denying well-deserved athletes into the Hall of Fame purely based on the suspicion that they were cheating, why start now? It is rational to be discomforted by the usage of steroids in athletics, but there has to be a way we can be consistent about it. How can any of the Hall of Fame voters validate their reasoning behind who gets in and who doesn’t anymore?

Steroids have definitely changed the dynamics of baseball and the way it is played to this day. The media almost portrays baseball as a bunch of genetically mutated animals swinging a bat around, making it almost unwatchable.

I will never forget watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa slug it out in 1998 for the single season home run record. The excitement, the anticipation, the thrill of witnessing history was enough to keep the nation on its heels. But much to baseball’s anguish, there has not been much to cheer about in the last 15 years.