I’m Not Here to Talk About the Past

In sports news, former St. Louis Cardinals slugger and likely Hall of Fame candidate Mark McGwire admitted in a teary confession this week to having used steroids during much of his playing career, a revelation that is about as shocking as learning that people view Kanye West as a bit of a ‘loudmouth’ or ‘jackass’ at times.


Essentially, McGwire came clean and confessed to something that anyone who has closely followed baseball, or even professional sports generally, for the past several years has already known for quite some time. He stonewalled everyone at the Congressional Hearings on steroid usage in baseball back in 2005, claiming that ‘he isn’t here to talk about the past.’ Sure, he didn’t technically lie. But this is and was a classic case of his silence, at the time, speaking louder than any words ever could.

And now that he has spoken, he has truly said an incredulously dumb thing. He claims that he only took steroids to ‘heal injuries’ and ‘keep his body healthy’ through what is always a long grind of a 162-game regular season (playoffs, of course, not included). True, we all know by now that steroids can be effective in that capacity. But when asked by Bob Costas if McGwire thinks he would have still belted every single home run in his career without the added benefit of steroids, he said he DOES believe this. Holy. Moly.

Now, he does raise a fair point by acknowledging that hitting a home run is a God-given gift (theological disputes aside for the second), and that the hand-eye coordination and timing involved in performing this feat isn’t something that can be improved by taking steroids.

You know what Big Mac? I’ll give that one to you.

But do NOT sit there and try to feed us this B.S. that steroids don’t also improve your strength, which thereby allows you to hit the ball faster, higher, harder, and ultimately, most importantly, farther. Anything that increases strength gives you a clear advantage over others not under the same influences.

You know what else? Screw this, I’m not about to launch into the whole ‘steroids in baseball’ business. We’ve all heard every angle of it about 1,000 times now anyway in the ‘24/7 media circus’ day and age with sports channels that never go dark and every fan from the Arctic Circle to the North Pole having the ability to blog, or call up a radio show, or post a status update on facebook, or post a ‘tweet’ on twitter. (Yep, I’m falling into at least 2 of those categories myself, thank you!). There’s not much left to be said. But I’m at the point now, like many, where I don’t even blame these guys so much anymore. We all should blame the sport and it’s overseers that never implemented any sort of anti-performance enhancing drug policies through all the years.

Another question. How strict are the policies that exist now? What baseball should really do is randomly test each and every player in the league at different times throughout the pre-season and regular season – you know, so that they don’t see it coming. Yeah I know – too expensive, logistical nightmare, difficult to pull off, easier to test all of them at one pre-determined time. Also, way easier for them to circumvent the test and beat the system when they know about it weeks ahead of time. Even still, some of these boneheads continue to get caught (I’m talking to you, Manny).

I’d like to be able to just enjoy baseball again without all the steroids stuff lurking underneath the surface, but it is difficult. It will always be there. Unfortunately, most of us are over it by now. We don’t really care anymore.

But I do find it funny to think back to about 11 years ago, when I was seemingly one of the few people skeptically raising an eyebrow when that reporter found Androstenedione in McGwire’s locker during the infamous summer of ’98. Andro, for those that don’t know or recall, was a substance banned in both the NFL and NBA at the time, but was allowed in baseball and the NHL. I even wrote a column in my college newspaper’s sports section questioning why nobody seemed to care about this.

But we were all falling in love with baseball all over again during this glorious post-strike-of-’94 era because of the Sosa/McGwire home run chase, so nobody wanted to rain on the parade. I never liked that it was just glossed over. And if you can actually find any video of 1998-era McGwire interviews on youtube or any other Web site where he was asked about it, it’s easy to see how uncomfortable, surly and under-the-surface angry he was – even back then (at least that’s how I remember it). Sure, some of these guys aren’t the sharpest knives in the kitchen, but even the dumbest among them knew (know?) the ethical ramifications of what they were (are?) doing.

If we only knew what was in store for us over the next decade. But hey, Big Mac’s cleared the air now – he can begin his stint as the Cardinals’ hitting coach in the 2010 season guilt-free! Of course, that’s what this confession was really all about. Oh and because he probably still wants to get into the Hall of Fame, and we all know the only way to do that is to ‘fess up to your character issues and admit what you did wrong (Hey, if Pete can do it, pretty much anybody can, right?).