There are a few reasons why this bothers me.
First he cheated. Fundamentally as a fan that hurts me, even though I know hundreds of others did the same thing.
Secondly, he broke sports most hallowed record under false pretenses.
Third, even in telling the truth McGwire told more lies.
He said he only juiced for health reasons, to help recover from injuries. I guess he doesn't buy the theory that his steroid use led to his body breaking down.
When pressed by Bob Costas he refused to even acknowledge that even if that were the case he still benefitted from the roids.
He said he had been hitting home runs in little league, high school, college the minor leagues and even as a rookie before discovering steroids (supposedly). That may be true, but not that many.
And then he trotted out the old hand eye coordination excuse. Yes its true steroids can't teach you how to hit a baseball traveling towards you at 95 miles per hour. But if you already know how to do that like say a major league baseball player, steroids will help you hit it farther. Even the player with the most natural power and the best hand eye coordination would still hit fly balls to the warning track. But with steroids those balls become home runs.
When asked if he could have hit 70 without roids McGwire said yes. I wish he would have said "I think so, but I never gave myself the chance."
A couple things McGwire said did stick with me.
He said he wanted to tell the truth to Congress that day but his lawyers couldn't get him immunity (a longshot) so he pulled the incredibly incriminating "I'm not here to talk about the past" routine. I've killed him over that for nearly five years but I now realize if you have to show up but you can't tell the truth and don't want to lie "I'm not here to talk about the past" is probably your best choice. Especially since "no hablo ingles" was taken by Sammy Sosa.
In his statement/confession McGwire said "I wish I never played in the steroid era."
That to me seems like his way of saying he felt obligated to cheat because everyone else was. I'm sure he feels had he played in the 60s or 70s he would have been a great home run hitter without ever hearing the word steroids.
But it was his misfortune that he played in the steroid era. And ours too.
3 comments:
A couple other notes I wanted to add but couldn't make them fit into the arc of the story I was working on:
The only reason McGwire made this admission is because the Cardinals hired him as hitting coach and they wanted all of this out of the way before he started.
I hope McGwire never gets in the Hall of Fame and judging from the vindictiveness of the writers I don't think he will. Maybe eventually but not in his first 15 years on the ballot.
I agree with all of these points and am also rooting against Mac's HOF induction. Same for Bonds, Palmeiro, Sosa, A-Rod, Clemens, etc.
These juicers don't get that fans love stats and feel betrayed when they can't rely on them to compare players' accomplishments. I don't feel strongly about Andre Dawson, but I like that you can at least compare players from his era on a relatively level playing field, and debate from there. Not sure you can say that for alot of new HOF candidates.
See... I was right about everything.
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