McGwire-Related Blogging

I probably shouldn't, but I need to get back into the swing of things somehow.

OK, Mark McGwire admitted he used steroids and HGH for about a decade, including the year he hit 70 home runs, which was at the time a major league record. I have a hard time believing anyone is surprised by this, as most people seemed to assume he was guilty and just wanted him to cop to it. 'Course, now that he's done that, many of those folks are jumping all over him, because his apology wasn't contrite enough, didn't go far enough, he raped their childhood, he disrespected the game, and so on. Spare me.

It's been my feeling for the last couple of years that I don't care if players use performance enhancers or not. They want to endanger their health to make themselves more money now, then it's their choice. I'm not assuming every player uses, as I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they either fail a drug test, or admit it themselves, but there's no one in the majors who it would surprise me to learn used PEDs*.

As for the stuff about respecting the game and its fans, is it only steroid use that disrespects the fans? Or did Hank Aaron and Mike Schmidt (and a whole bunch of other players) disrepect the game by taking greenies? Did Gaylord Perry and Whitey Ford disrespect the game by scuffing and otherwise doctoring baseballs? Did the Powers That Be disrespect baseball by not allowing non-whites to play in the majors for decades? If the asnwer is no, then what's so special about steroids that they're the only thing that disrespects the game and its fans. If yes, then has the game ever been respected, at least since the early 1900s? It all starts to sound like those folks who look wistfully back to the 1950s as the good old days, when everything was better, ignoring all the things that were wrong back then.

As for respecting the fans, it's the ballplayer's job to entertain us, correct? To go out there, play hard, and give us a good time. So McGwire takes steroids, he's able to work out more in the offseason, and build up more muscle so that when he hits the ball, he can make it travel farther. And he takes HGH to help himself stay healthy so he can actually be on the field. Isn't that helping him to do a better job entertaining the fans? Is it disrespect because he didn't come out and say back then that hell yeah he was taking steroids so he could get out on the field and hit some dingers?

Dan Shanoff said he was still mad after the admission because back in '98, McGwire demanded our admiration, which is a crock. Wasn't McGwire the one uncomfortable in the spotlight, and it took Sosa's supposed joy to bring Mac out of his shell and get into the spirit of the chase? If you admired McGwire, that was your choice, so go be pissed off at yourself. Seriously, go look at yourself in the mirror, ask yourself why you got suckered in, and if you're still ticked, slap yourself.

I can't remember exactly how I felt back in 1998. There's no denying I felt some excitement about the Chase, since it looked as though I'd get to see a St. Louis Cardinal break baseball's supposedly most hallowed record. Still, that was offset by the fact the team wasn't very good. They won 83 games, but that was largely because their schedule in September pitted them almost entirely against lousy teams like the Expos and Reds. Their rotation was a shambles (Todd Stottlemyre basically carried it on his back up to the All-Star Break), and the bullpen was an even bigger disaster, especially the first four months when Jeff Brantley was closer. The lineup was entirely too focused on power, to the exclusion of speed, for my tastes, as it seemed like everyone was trying to hit home runs like McGwire. The Chase was nice, but it couldn't make up for the Cardinals being bad**.

My dad and I went to one game that year, against the Marlins. We got lucky, as Stottlemyre, the one useful starting pitcher they had at that point, went up against Livan Hernandez, the one useful starting pitcher the Marlins had (this was the year after their first World Series, and subsequent fire sale of all veteran talent). Plus, it's one of the few games Mike Piazza played for Florida, as he was in the process of being traded from the Dodgers to the Mets. It was a game where McGwire hit an estimated 545-foot home run, but more importantly, the Cardinals won behind a complete game from Stottlemyre. I remember my dad and I both being ticked the fans in fron of us were doing the Wave in the 9th, as Stott tried to finish the job, which he did.

That I know for a fact that McGwire was on steroids doesn't take away from the fact I had fun going to the game with my dad, or how hard I rooted for Stottlemyre, or the fact it's the only game I went to that Mike Piazza played in (in one of his 5 games as a Marlin, no less). It's still a good memory. If other people want to destroy their pleasant memories because of what a player did, well that's their call.

I'm sure McGwire confessed now because of his new job as hitting coach for the Cardinals. Does doing it now stave off a media circus at Spring Training, or during the season? Probably not. I imagine sportswriters (annoying wankers) and opposing fans (it's what opposing fans do) will be lining up to take their shots. Does getting this off his chest help McGwire be a better hitting coach? Hell if I know. It might, if only because it won't be weighing on his mind now, and he'll be able to focus on the job at hand.

Should the Cardinals have hired him? I don't know, but I don't have any objections, beyond concerns this will be a distraction for the players. If the team thinks he can help their approach at the plate, and there weren't any better candidates available, then I guess so. It seems wrong to try and turn a blind eye to the whole Steroid Era and its players, like that'll make it go away. It happened, those players are out there, and jsut because they took PEDs doesn't mean they have no insight into the game. Mostly I'm OK with it because I see it as an attempt by LaRussa to rehab the image of an old player of his that he liked. One thing I tend to respect is people who stick by their friends through thick and thin, and I think that's what LaRussa's doing here. That can come back to bite you, and it probably will bite LaRussa, at the very least in terms of his public image, since it'll strengthen the arguments of those who call him a PED enabler, but he seems prepared to take that bullet. Or he thinks he can prove it false with this somehow.

And heck, they (I'm assuming "they" means Catholics) say confession is good for the soul, so if this helps McGwire move forward with his life in general, then great. It would have been better to confess years ago, so it wouldn't have hung over him all this time. Or not do PEDs at all, if using them was going to bother him so much***. But that's how people are. We do things we regret afterwards, but were able to rationalize at the time. I have regrets, you probably do too. Whether they're as important as what McGwire's apparently**** were likely depends on your perspective.

OK, hopefully I've gotten this out of my system, and I'll start talking about the NFL playoffs later in the week. Maybe discuss the Hall of Fame ballot. I know the results came out already, but I mean to go over the ballot and just dicked around too long.

* I used to say there was no one except Jamie Moyer that would surprise me, but thinking about it, PEDs might explain how he's managed to hold together and keep pitching into his mid-40s. Note that I'm not saying he actually does, just that I've reassessed and concluded he wouldn't surprise me, either.

** Which is why I bristled all through that season whenever Sportscenter anchors would imply that while Cub fans were concerned primarily with their team winning, with Sosa's home run totals coming in second, whether the Cards won or not was secondary to the fans, compared to whether Big Mac smashed another one over the fence. I hated that blanket statement, all the more because I probably knew that for some fans, it was true.

*** Like I said, I don't care if the players use PEDs, but they ought to accept the consequences of doing so. I'm thinking more of health concerns, but in this case it also means having scorn heaped upon them by sportswriters and fans. If they don't want to risk dealing with any of that, then they shouldn't take them, and they can risk their performance dipping to the point they lose their job. Which is a lousy way for things to go, but every action produces results, good and bad.

**** I say apparently because you could always argue he doesn't actually regret what he did. I don't have the patience to watch the interview, so I'm not going to judge his sincerity.