It’s time to admit we didn’t care McGwire took steroids

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Now that Mark McGwire has apologized for using steroids, the quick question is what are we all to think?

The short answer: Depends on which illusion we want to hold on to.

Before his apology McGwire had given us two signature moments—one on the playing field, the other in a Congressional hearing room. We all enjoyed pretending there was nothing suspicious about his home run record in ‘98, even after a bottle of Andro was discovered in his locker. Then we feigned outrage  in 2005 when McGwire refused to dig a deeper hole for himself and his fellow players by refusing to answer questions from a grandstanding Congress.

Is it really fair to point fingers after the fact when we all watched this play out in front of us?

This is not to condone what McGwire did, said, and did not say during his time in the spotlight, but a little context would be nice. His historic performance in ’98, the one that brought baseball back from its ruinous labor war on ‘94, was nothing short of Bunyonesque. By then it was pretty obvious that ball players were using performance enhancing drugs—too many records were falling, too many bodies were bigger, one too many bottles of Andro was found in McGwire’s locker for us to really believe otherwise.

But we did. And we cheered.

Here’s how it looked the following spring:

The Balco investigation shattered that illusion well before McGwire testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in March of 2005. By then baseball writers who rarely wrote about the drug story playing out right in front of them had grown indignant. Fans who attended baseball games in record numbers to watch dozens of players having career years into their early 40s were vocally outraged. Owners whose franchises were doubling in value were suddenly dumbfounded.

The Commissioner—the one who studied Andro for six years before banning it a month before it was reclassified as an anabolic steroid, then sold his franchise in baseball’s smallest market for $240 million just months before McGwire testified—suddenly needed answers.

We all needed someone to blame. And thanks to the Oversight Committee—the same committee that would pass on investigating the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the Jack Abramoff scandal, the botched response to Katrina, and the Valerie Plame leak among other matters—McGwire became a convenient target.

Today we got McGwire’s third signature moment. After issuing a statement to the Associated Press, McGwire went on MLB TV with Bob Costas to admit to his sins. Often choking back tears, McGwire told us that he took steroids to get healthy, that it was a huge mistake, and that he wished there had been drug testing while he was playing.

There have been built-up emotions I’ve had inside me a good five years now. … I want to come clean. I want to move on after this,” he said. “It was a very regrettable thing to do. I can’t apologize any more than to say I’m sorry to anybody close to me.”

Is this a play for the Hall of Fame? Sure, but that’s secondary. Mostly, McGwire needed to get on with his life. He was frozen in time, stuck in a hearing room on March 17, 2005, refusing to tell what he knew about baseball’s most glorious and now infamous era. And you can be sure that this mea culpa—on baseball’s own network and website, complete with commercial interruptions—was part of Selig’s bargain for warmly welcoming McGwire back to his game. (No one has benefited more from McGwire’s acceptance of blame than Selig, who continues to paint himself as the man who cleaned up baseball instead of the commissioner who looked the other way.)

What we don’t know is what his finances look like. McGwire made lots of money playing baseball, but you’d be surprised how many athletes retire without enough to live on. And McGwire had every reason to believe he’d make plenty of money going forward. But his marketability died with his Congressional testimony.

What we do know and rarely remember is that McGwire was in a Catch-22 situation back in 2005. Tell the truth and he’s on his way to San Francisco for a date with the Grand Jury investigating Balco. Once there, he’d be asked what he used and where he got it. No doubt, plenty of other players would have been exposed, shredding their reputations and McGwire’s, too. If he refused to talk to the Grand Jury, he’s on his way to jail.

Tonight, McGwire told us he was going to testify before Congress until his lawyers explained the consequences. He also said his lawyers could not get House Reform Committee chairman Tom Davis (former R-VA.) and ranking minority member Henry Waxman (D-CA.) to grant him immunity in exchange for his testimony. Still wondering about the motives of Congress here.

I wanted to get this off my chest,” McGwire told Costas. “We did not get immunity. I faced possible prosecution, a possible grand jury appearance. Bringing in my family, teammates, coaches—how the heck am i going to bring those people into this for some stupid thing I did. So I took the hit.”

“I had to do what I did to protect myself, my family, my friends. Anyone in my shoes would have done the same thing.”

In many ways, McGwire is still taking the hit, insisting that no one—not his manager, not any teammate, not even his family—knew he was taking steroids off and on for more than a dozen years. There were moments during his interview where you could tell that taking the fall still grates. It was never more clear than when he insisted steroids did not help his career, only his health—as if the two are mutually exclusive. But if I were him, I’m be tired of others hiding behind his larger-than-life figure, too.

We’ll all debate the merits of McGwire’s apology for the next day or so. We’ll do it all over again next month when he puts on a uniform and faces the full media at the Cardinals spring training camp. Much of it will sound like what we heard on ESPN, which didn’t wait until McGwire’s tearful talk with Costas to get on the record. Buster Olney, the face of the network’s baseball coverage, said he’ll continue voting for McGwire in Hall of Fame balloting because he assumes all the elite players of that era were taking steroids. Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt called in to say he’d welcome McGwire to Cooperstown “with open arms” if the baseball writers vote him in.

ESPN Baseball Tonight analyst and former Phillies star John Kruk said  “as a clean player” he’s now upset with the likes of McGwire and other steroid users. The reason? Kruk figures he’d have fared better if everyone was clean. Kruk, of course, failed to mention how much he’d gained while playing alongside admitted steroid user Darren Daulton and accused user Lenny Dykstra, who carried Philadelphia to the World Series in 1993.

But Kruk’s no different than the rest of us. We all seem to forget what we were thinking while we were enthralled by McGwire, Bonds, Clemens and the rest. We sports fans like to keep our illusions intact. It was sad watching McGwire tonight. Not for what he did then. But for what we force him to do now.