Spare us the tears, Mark. It’s 2010 and nobody is buying the pathetic nonsense that you didn’t take steroids to help you hit home runs. Furthermore, if it weren’t for steroids – not androstenedione, creatine or any other supplement – Mark McGwire would have been out of baseball around the time he was setting home run records.
Steroids were responsible for allowing McGwire to embark on his magical 8-year run that began in Oakland in 1995. That’s all we needed to hear. Not getting that simple, unqualified admission made the McGwire/Costas interview kind of silly.
McGwire acted like a little kid who got caught doing something wrong and broke down in an attempt to minimize the punishment and engender some sympathy.
Although it is sad that McGwire is still lying to himself and is still in denial about his steroid use. His claim that he didn’t take steroids to hit home runs defies logic, especially when you consider that Little Mac had the help of a public relations firm.
And let’s ignore Tony LaRussa’s defense of McGwire. LaRussa was on the scene of two of the biggest steroid scandals in baseball’s history, the Jose Canseco/McGwire A’s and the McGwire St. Louis Cardinals, and now he wants to bring Mac back to the scene of one of the crimes.
I wrote about this years ago, and my case holds up to this day. LaRussa has managed to skate through all these years without having any of this steroid stink stick to him. Don’t buy this “Teflon Don’s” take on McGwire or anything to do with the steroids in baseball story.
The overlooked joke of this whole story is that Mark McGwire is coming back as the Cardinals’ hitting instructor. McGwire is a guy who struck out once every 4 times at bat and was worthless at the plate when he didn’t hit a home run. In his last year, after the steroids had ravaged his body, he had a .187 average, 56 hits with 29 home runs and 4 doubles. He struck out 118 times in 299 at-bats, the 4th highest total of his career in about 40% fewer total at-bats for the season.
The bottom line is that Mark McGwire got another chance to come clean and he blew it.
