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Mark McGwire finally came clean Monday, admitting he used steroids when he broke baseball's home run record in 1998.
Mark McGwire comes clean, admits steroids use
- Thread starter Barking Hard
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It's about time. Glad to see him own up, though it is hard to look past the "I'm supposed to do this so I will" feel of it.
Whatever. All the players from that era should be equally tarnished, fairly or not, for letting it happen.
Every guy who appears to have been clean but now must be a suspect (like Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey, Jr., two of my favorites) should be allowed to punch this guy in the face.
Then I'll feel theees much better about the cheating.
Whatever. All the players from that era should be equally tarnished, fairly or not, for letting it happen.
Every guy who appears to have been clean but now must be a suspect (like Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey, Jr., two of my favorites) should be allowed to punch this guy in the face.
Then I'll feel theees much better about the cheating.
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McGwire only admitted he did roids this year because he is coming out of hiding to work on the St Loius staff, he should be indicted for perjury and banned from baseball.
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Because he knew he would be asked about it over and over again now that he is coming out of hiding. So he is trying to come clean now so that he doesn't become a distraction to the team. For all we know, it may have been a condition the Cardinals put on him to be hired as a hitting coach. I'm speculating on the last part, but I can't stand cheating in sports, and he cheated and lied about it all these years, and now he decides to come clean about it, too me it's too little too late.
Pete Rose is banned from baseball for cheating/betting on baseball and lied about it, why are these cases against roid users any different, ban em all, I say. Bud Selig is an idiot and knew of steroid use, but allowed it because it put more people in the seats.
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My point is this, if Pete Rose is banned from baseball for cheating and lying about it, roid users who do the same thing should be treated just like Pete, to me there is a double standard at play here. The reason roid users get off is that the astonomical numbers they put up while on roids helped baseball make tons of money.
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I agree that all these Steroid heads should be banned. Not out of hate or anything, but just because the game could use some cleaning up at the expense of the big stars. Never happen because of the dollars.
And why should he be indicted? As far as I can tell - and I am not BB junkie - he never told Congress squat. Didn't deny or admit.
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McGwire’s feckless admission is too late
By Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports 2 hours, 50 minutes ago
Well, of course he did.
And now that he wants something – a job, a reasonably nonbelligerent working environment, peace of mind, forgiveness, I suppose – Mark McGwire has come a little closer to the truth.
He and his handlers – where were they five years ago? – typed out a statement, sent it along to the Associated Press and, presumably, put their hands over their ears.
Turns out, he – they – had a damned good reason not to talk about the past. But we knew that, and they knew we knew. So what exactly do we have today, the day McGwire simply confirmed that so many of those home runs were manufactured not in a batting cage, but in a lab and a bathroom stall?
For one, we have a man so used to hiding and lying that, years after cheating a nation of baseball fans, he feels sorry for … himself.
“Looking back,” he wrote, “I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”
Really.
Since we’re all in the mood for looking back, let’s consider this, Mark: You were the steroid era. Still are. You and every guy who made the same terrible, weak decisions, over and over. We’ve become so comfortable blaming Bud Selig and Don Fehr, we forget the real villains in this. They’re McGwire, Canseco, A-Rod, Palmeiro, Bonds, every man in the Mitchell Report, every player who put a needle in his body and made the next player choose between that and pumping gas for a living, everyone too cowardly to compete straight up.
The steroid era isn’t a seized batch of urine samples, or Victor Conte vs. the feds, or Selig vs. his own eyes. It’s McGwire living the lie, and the hundreds of others just like him – their angry denials as fraudulent as their careers.
“I have always told the truth,” McGwire cried a half-decade ago, when Jose Canseco accused him of steroid use, “and I am saddened that I continue to face this line of questioning.”
So McGwire comes clean a month before spring training, perhaps enough lead time that the St. Louis Cardinals camp at Jupiter, Fla., won’t be totally overrun by reporters and other snoops. Maybe Tony La Russa, his manager then and his boss now, will be over the humiliation by then, he having spent the better part of the decade backing McGwire against any and all steroids charges.
“It’s fabrication,” La Russa said more than once.
And you’d have thought McGwire would have called La Russa before Monday, seeing as La Russa was being such a good (and misguided) friend and all.
By Monday, La Russa had to come up with a whole new way to praise McGwire, which he managed quite nimbly.
“No one on the teams I managed worked harder or better than Mark,” La Russa said in a statement put out by the Cardinals. “And now, his willingness to admit mistakes, express his regret, and explain the circumstances that led him to use steroids add to my respect for him. I’ve defended Mark because I observed him develop his unique power-hitting skill through a rigorous physical and fundamental workout program.”
That and the 10 or 12 years of Winstrol, Deca and HGH.
You know what would have been more impressive? Had McGwire in the five years since he ducked questions from Congress come clean not for his own benefit but for the good of the young men about to make the same awful choice he did. He could have announced it on the Taylor Hooton Foundation website, raising money and awareness for anti-steroids education. Instead, we get a statement serving himself and his new career as a hitting coach, just in time for his return from hiding and the season.
“Now that I have become the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals,” he wrote, “I have the chance to do something that I wish I was able to do five years ago.
“I used steroids during my playing career and I apologize.”
Yes, he could not be expected to say these things until he became the Cardinals’ hitting coach. Before then, clearly, he would not have had the chance.
What’s it matter now, though, right? He’s one man among hundreds, maybe thousands. He lifted the game that summer, right? Him and Sammy Sosa so heroic, Sports Illustrated’s Sportsmen of the Year, National League MVPs 1A and 1B – they brought baseball back, right? They saved the sport, remember?
Sadly, it came during what would become known as the steroid era, which, apparently, was just bad timing for McGwire.
But, we let a man up. We forgive. We hope somebody out there learns from this. Hell, we weren’t taking many of those 583 home runs seriously anyway, certainly not the 135 he hit in the 1998 and ’99 seasons. The man is eighth on the all-time home run list (tied at the moment with Alex Rodriguez and barely sniffs a quarter of the Hall of Fame ballots. We knew. And he knew we knew.
You know what would have been nice, though?
Had McGwire not wasted our time.
Not in 1998. And not on Monday.
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When Canseco came out with the info he had, I thought he was mainly doing it for the money on his book sales, but part of me knew that what he was saying was the truth. I am now glad that he did what he did, at least it forced baseball's hand on the whole issue, something that Bud and the rest of the roiders were unwilling to do.
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Twenty years from now, I wonder if we'll give Canseco credit for brining steroids, PED's, to the forefront and how he affected the long term health of others.