Always a popular politician in Washington, D.C.,
Barry won a seat on the city council in 1992. He won
a landslide victory to a fourth mayoral term in 1994.
In May, 1996, Barry abruptly took a leave from his
mayoral duties to seek help at a retreat in rural Mary-
land and then at a more distant church facility near
St. Louis, raising suspicions that he had relapsed.
Barry’s hiatus occurred not long after he underwent
surgery for prostate cancer, and he described him-
self as suffering from physical and spiritual exhaus-
tion. He retired from politics in 1998 and aborted a
run for city council in 2002 after another drug inci-
dent. He returned to the city council in 2004.
Impact The Barry case made it quite apparent that
many African Americans harbor a deep distrust of
white public officials and that whites have difficulty
understanding the depth of this distrust.
Further Reading
Agronsky, Jonathan I. Z.Marion Barr y: The Politics of
Race. Latham, N.Y.: British American, 1991.
Barras, Jonetta Rose.The Last of the Black Emperors:
The Hollow Comeback of Marion Barr y in a New Age of
Black Leaders.Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998.
Car yn E. NeumannSee also African Americans; Crime; Dinkins, Da-
vid; Race relations; Simpson murder case. Baseball
Definition Professional team sport
Baseball in the 1990’s experienced considerable economic
growth as new markets were created. Despite a players’ strike
that led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, star
players such as Mark Mcgwire and Sammy Sosa helped to
reinvigorate the sport in the latter half of the decade.
In the 1990’s, four new teams joined Major League
Baseball: the Colorado Rockies, the Florida Marlins,
the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and the Arizona
Diamondbacks. New stadiums in Cleveland, Balti-
more, Atlanta, Chicago (White Sox), and Arlington,
Texas, attracted fan attendance. In 1993, Major
League Baseball attendance reached 70.3 million, a
record high. The new markets proved lucrative. On
April 9, 1993, the Rockies played their first home
game at Mile High Stadium to a crowd of 80,227, a
record attendance for baseball previously held in
1958 during a game between the San Francisco Gi-
ants and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Rockies total
attendance reached 4.48 million, and Florida had
3.06 million. Toronto had 4.1 million in the
Skydome, and Camden Yards, the home of the Balti-
more Orioles, attracted 3.6 million. The future of
baseball, however, was challenged with a 234-day
strike that spanned the 1994-1995 seasons. The
strike resulted in the cancellation of the 1994 World
Series.
To generate greater interest for postseason play,
baseball inaugurated realignment for the 1994 sea-
son, the first in twenty-five years. The American
League and the National League would have three
divisions: Eastern, Western, and the newly created
Central. A wild-card team (the second-place finisher
with the best record) would join three division lead-
ers in an extra round of playoffs. The 1998 season in-82 Baseball The Nineties in America
Mayor Marion Barry speaks to reporters in May, 1996, after re-
turning from a retreat in rural Maryland to recover from physical
and spiritual exhaustion.(AP/Wide World Photos)