The San Francisco Examiner's Gwen Knapp addresses the Mark McGwire problem in a column.
McGwire, by all accounts a good guy, seems stranded in purgatory due to his alleged PED and steroid use. Forget the mild Andro, but consider the stronger juice, as alleged in Jose Canseco's book "Juiced". Despite opinions that McGwire only did Andro, those whispers (or shouts) about the juice appear to doom the big sluggers HOF aspirations. He percent of the vote fell this year to ~21%.
Now, after Hall of Fame vote #3, McGwire is neither gaining or losing ground; he appears to be hopelessly stranded in some nether world of steroid penance. But Gwen Knapp, of the SF Chronicle details a McGwire confession:
In about a month, when the Super Bowl is over and spring training is
about to open, Mark McGwire should start talking about his past. He can
tell us the things he wouldn’t say in front of Congress, answering all
the questions he ducked back in 2005.
The timing would be perfect. It’s a dead zone in the sports schedule. He wouldn’t be distracting from anyone else’s glory, except perhaps the models in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue...
Above all, seven years have passed since McGwire retired from baseball. Regardless of what he might have ingested to enhance his career, he can’t be prosecuted for it now.
Every applicable statute of limitations has expired.
Might there be legal issues?
f he used steroids or growth hormone, he has nothing to fear from speaking up. His reputation can’t suffer. As it stands now, his baseball legacy is not 583 career home runs or 70 homers in that magical 1998 season, when Roger Maris’ sons embraced him as the heir to their father’s record. It’s: “I’m not here to talk about the past.”
His evasions at the Congressional hearings on performance-enhancing drugs deserved every bit of the ridicule they received, but under the right circumstances, they could easily be forgiven.
Juicers should come clean, to attain the public -- and press -- good graces; and McGwire could use some polish on that tarnished reputation to make a run at the Hall of Fame:
Jason Giambi, McGwire’s protege a dozen years ago in Oakland, is proof that people will get over a player’s doping if he reaches even the vicinity of truth and contrition. They don’t even demand a full accounting. They just want a vague mea culpa and an apology. It’s certainly not a game of inches.
Still, McGwire seems likely to cling to silence forever. In his opening statement on Capitol Hill, he said players couldn’t win either way. If they said they didn’t use, no one would believe them.
If they said they doped, they’d risk “public scorn and endless government investigation.”
At this point, though, the public scorn can’t get any worse. He can’t alienate people who believe he was clean, because they don’t exist. McGwire’s biggest defenders are, at best, apologists.
The issues are tricky here, legal or banned; McGwire does seem above some of the other flotsam with juicers of the 90s and 00s:
They’ll say that there’s no absolute proof and that the stuff wasn’t banned in baseball when he played anyway. (Steroid use without prescription was, however, illegal in the real world.)
But the best defense for McGwire has nothing to do with the slippery ethics of doping. It’s the fact that he didn’t commit perjury. Whatever grandiose vision he might have about himself, he didn’t have the gall to lie under oath, thinking that people would just believe him because of who he is.
Contrast that with Roger Clemens, whose Congressional appearance included the following:
A. A defense about growth hormone used at his home that shifted the blame to his wife, who apparently wanted to look hotter than usual while posing for the SI swimsuit issue, B. Discussion of a supportive call he received from the elder President Bush on a duck-hunting trip, and C. Borderline hysteria over Andy Pettitte’s incriminating statements.
In fact, Clemens’ “he mis-remembered” line has more staying power than McGwire’s aversion to talking about the past, because it can’t be erased and because some wag Photoshopped a picture of Pettitte, adding a beauty-queen tiara and a sash that said “Miss Remembered.”
Add Barry Bonds’ upcoming trial on perjury charges, Marion Jones’ crocodile tears and six months behind bars for lying to investigators, Tyler Hamilton’s contention that a vanishing twin might have led to a positive blood-doping test and Floyd Landis’ Jack Daniel’s defense. Pretty soon, McGwire starts looking like a model of integrity.
Strange, isn’t it, how steroids inflate muscles and statistics, yet shrink the definition of decency?
As as Knapp says, McGwire could come clean, put it all in perspective, and regain a proportion of the glory of 10 years ago.
McGwire could vault the bar easily if he just explained himself. At
the hearings, he seemed
horribly conflicted and somewhat ashamed. He
didn’t like being questioned, but he also turned squeamish when he
avoided answering. He can fix all of that. A month from now seems like
the perfect time.
He may have reasons to wait longer, perhaps out of fear that the government will demand other people’s names — suppliers, ex-teammates. If so, another February, when everyone else’s statute of limitations has expired, would do. It probably won’t be enough to put McGwire in the Hall of Fame, but it would win a lot of respect and a special place in baseball history. He’d be that rare batter who took a swing years late and still made contact.
There is a good argument to be made for McGwire's contrition. He put up good numbers as a skinny rookie with over 40 home runs. His physique exploded later, and especially in that '98 season, however he was a major talent as a home run hitter at his height.
If McGwire doens't become contrite, he risks becoming one more footnote to the steroids era. If he comes clean, there is a chance that contriteness will cast his career in a different light. Wouldn't a chance at redemption be better than a vague steroid purgatory forever?
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