by Marcas Grant

Created on: May 20, 2009

Chick dig the long ball. That was the phrase that paid during Major League Baseball's so-called Steroid Era of the last 15 years. Players got larger from their use of performance-enhancing drugs and home runs numbers skyrocketed. Fans saw a dramatic shift in the way the game was played - away from a sport that relied on speed and strategy, to one that looked more like a beefed up beer league softball game.

The stolen base, it seemed, had become a lost art as teams stood around waiting for the three-run homer which inevitably came. Players like Dave Roberts and Juan Pierre, who in the 1980s would have been prized leadoff men for their ability to disrupt defenses on the base paths, became utility men who had trouble finding consistent homes. Certainly no would ever again approach Rickey Henderson's record setting 130 stolen base year of 1982.

Meanwhile, the strikeout which had long been the bane of every hitting coach's existence, was looked at as a necessary evil. If a player could hit 30 to 40 home runs every year (or more in some cases), a team could live with the same player striking out three times a night. Bobby Bonds record of 189 strikeouts in a season stood for 34 years until Adam Dunn whiffed 195 times in 2004. (In the four completed seasons since, the 190-strikeout mark has been surpassed five times. Arizona's Mark Reynolds set a new Major League standard in 2008 by fanning 204 times - while hitting just 28 home runs.)

Then in 2003, spurred by a public outcry of fans and media labeling the steroid users as cheaters and demanding some sort of punishment, the league began unannounced testing of players. With the threshold of more than five percent testing positive, mandatory testing was instituted the following year.

At that moment, fans began to keep a close eye on the game, wondering if Major League Baseball was putting its house in order. Anecdotally, it appeared to be working. Many players looked slimmer. Was MLB getting a handle on its sport and would we see a return to the game being played the way it used to be?

Yet while it appears that the league is doing its part to bust rule-breakers, it doesn't seem to have created the anticipated effect on the numbers.

Early in 2009, it looked like the stolen base had returned. In late April, fans marveled at Colorado Rockies outfielder Dexter Fowler stealing five stolen bases in a game against the San Diego Padres. Less than a week later, he was one-upped by Tampa Bay's Carl Crawford who swiped six

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