MLB sets attendance records

Steroid controversy and poor

starts by typical contenders were not enough to prevent Major

League Baseball from setting an attendance record for the

second season in a row.

Baseball officials announced Thursday that the all-time

one-season mark was surpassed Wednesday night, four days

before the final games of the season.

Thirty major league teams drew total attendance of

73,070,631 spectators entering Thursday's games, surpassing

the 2004 mark of 73,022,969. That marks a 2.4 percent

attendance boost above this point last year.

That works out to an average of 30,936 a game, up 535 fans

a game from 2004.

??Baseball's popularity is greater than ever,'' Major

League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said. ??We are living

in Baseball's Golden Era.''

Major League Baseball had not broken its attendance record

in consecutive seasons since 1989 completed a run of three

years in a row.

The 1990s drop in attendance, bottoming out after a labor

dispute wiped out the 1994 World Series, was reversed by

interest in record-setting home run production by such

sluggers as Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.

But McGwire refused to deny taking steroids under oath

before lawmakers in March and Bonds has been linked to the

BALCO steroid scandal. His trainer, Greg Anderson, was among

those pleading guilty in the steroid distribution ring.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Bonds told a

BALCO grand jury he used products that prosecutors believe

were then-undetectable steroids.

But in the 1990s, baseball did not test for steroids and

they were not banned substances - perhaps forever tainting

the homer records produced by McGwire and Bonds, now third on

the all-time homer list.