Surprise Surprise, McGwire Comes Out (About Steroids)

New York Times- Mark McGwire, whose inflated statistics and refusal to address his past came to symbolize a synthetic era in baseball history, acknowledged on Monday that he used steroids through the 1990s.

McGwire has been out of baseball since retiring after the 2001 season, making few public appearances besides his infamous performance before Congress in 2005, when he dodged questions about steroid use. He starts next month as the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, and said he needed to make the admission to move forward.

“It’s something I’m certainly not proud of,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “I’m certainly sorry for having done it. Some day, somehow, somewhere I knew I’d probably have to talk about this. I guess the steppingstone was being offered the hitting coach job with the Cardinals. At that time I said, ‘I need to come clean about this.’”

Another years goes by and again Mark McGwire fails to get nod from even 25% of Hall of Fame voters. SO what does he decide to do? He pulls a Pete Rose. Admits his wrongs in an effort to one day be voted into the Hall. I'm sure it's relieving for you to finally tell the truth, to confirm what everybody had already assumed to be true and to make Jose Canseco look better, but that's all it's going to do for you.

McGwire represents everything about 1990's and 2000's baseball. He represents an era that was so consumed in the pursuit of individual records that they forgot what the game of baseball really meant. In 1998, McGwire and Sammy Sosa (another steroid user) captured the attention of the nation in their pursuit of the single season home run record, juiced out of their minds. Barry Bonds ended up breaking that record and then set on a pursuit to take down Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, and he did it all with a head twice the size (physically speaking) of when he entered the league in 1986. Roger Clemens used anabolic steroids to help propel him to 354 wins and nearly 4700 strikeouts. Countless other players took performance enhancing drugs because they were selfish and forgot why the game of baseball is played.

Baseball is a team sport, but it also gives players the opportunity to showcase their individual talents. Aaron's 755, Roger Maris' 61, Cy Young's 511, Joe DiMaggio's 56 and Nolan Ryan's 5714 are just some of the records that are immortal to the game. They signify great feats of human strength, endurance and, most importantly, hard work. Players like McGwire not only cheated themselves when they decided to use PED's but they cheated the fans and the entire game of baseball.

So when McGwire says, "[I] agreed to not talk about the past. And it was not enjoyable to do that", it just pisses me off. Cry me a fucking river. You lost respect for the game and as such, I have no respect for you.