Oh, miggity, miggity, Mac. We knew this day would come. I think a lot of fans pretty much suspected Mark McGwire was juicing even before his little testimony before Congress in 2005.
You know, the one where he didn’t want to "discuss the past." And, in fact, managed to work that phrase into just about every response to a question whether it was relevant or not.
That to me, was a glaring sign that something was up.
As we know now, Mac in fact was using steroids during the late 1990s – including during his magical, homerun record-breaking season in 1998. We also know now McGwire was advised by his attorneys not to answer some of those questions from Congress because their attempt to get him immunity had failed.
I watched most of the interview in which McGwire admits to using steroids. He says it started in order to help him recover from his injuries faster (where have I heard that one before? Somewhere in San Francisco , Barry Bonds is laughing).
McGwire admits it was a mistake and apologized to the Maris family, Bud Selig, his fans and the league. Part of me felt sorry for the guy – it’s a lot to carry around for more than a decade. But the other part of me thinks he should know better. And as a baseball fan and someone who has watched this sport become riddled with disappointment after disappointment it's enough to make anyone sick. Heck, I might even stop believing in Santa Claus.
As a fan, I think this steroids argument has stopped being about who used what. It's about ruining the sport of baseball. Will there ever be a time when we see a muscle-y guy hit a grand slam and our next thought is not, "I wonder if he's using?"
I hope so. But I don’t see that time coming any time soon. Maybe for our kids’ generation.
But for now a sport that we call America’s pastime, a sport that holds such idyllic purity in those black-and-white photos of days gone by, baseball has veered far off course and the ones who get really get hurt by that are the fans.