McGwire’s New Lease Should Start with a Closed Mouth
Redemption is a word that has been thrown around a lot this week in relation to Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. After a spring that saw him admit to steroid use in an awkward press conference, hip surgery that robbed him of the first month of the season, and the ever present label of playoff choker, Rodriguez has received plenty of positive press and fan reaction after an impressive postseason that saw his team take home their 27th championship. While Rodriguez’s redemptive qualities can be debated ad nauseum, Mark McGwire is looking for the same forgiveness and forgetfulness that many have bestowed upon A-Rod.
Last week Mark McGwire was hired to be the new hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals. Manager Tony La Russa said of McGwire, “I don’t know how many years I have left to manage, and I wanted to take this opportunity to invite a guy who I think has a very special talent.” La Russa doesn’t specify what that talent is, but one may surmise that it involves needles and/or lying. McGwire is being hired, in part, as an image reclamation project by his former employers and close friend, but also because he can actually help some of the Cardinals’ hitters. Matt Holliday has said that working under McGwire’s tutelage had a profound impact on his hitting this year.
After shunning baseball (and the truth) for much of the time since his retirement, McGwire is now back in the spotlight and may be forced to answer some tough questions about his alleged use of illegal performance enhancing drugs. Many have theorized that McGwire should go the route of the aforementioned Rodriguez who came out of his admission of illegal PED use no worse for wear in the long run. What already seems to be forgotten is Rodriguez was in Colorado for over a month having surgery and rehabbing after his bumbling press conference. Once he returned to the Yankees the story quickly shifted to how his return would assist the struggling Yankees offense. If McGwire admits to any PED use he will not be able to hide for weeks until a new storyline emerges. Rodriguez also did not have the history of McGwire’s joke testimony before Congress. While A-Rod did lie to Katie Couric, one imagines she is lied to on a regular basis. (“Yes, Ms. Couric, you do look younger than Meredith Veira.”)
While McGwire’s appearance before Congress points to guilt, his opening statement attempted to alleviate any appearance of fault by saying:
Asking me or any other player to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve the problem. If a player answers ‘No,’ he simply will not be believed; if he answers ‘Yes,’ he risks public scorn and endless government investigations…. My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself. I will say, however, that it remains a fact in this country that a man, any man, should be regarded as innocent unless proven guilty.
As he alluded to in his Congressional testimony, McGwire will never escape the scrutiny of the media and the public, and unless there is real evidence against him, coming clean serves no purpose. He is in a difficult spot, albeit of his own doing. Not admitting PED use will forever leave him in the “did it” column in most people’s minds, but admission will put him in the “told ya so” column with no real way to escape either.
Every other juiced up slugger of the late 1990s and early 2000s has had their name surface in some type of investigation or test survey that has been leaked. There are some players who still have denied guilt in the face of incontrovertible evidence, such as Roger Clemens. All the baseball world has on McGwire is a bottle of androstenedione (before it was illegal in baseball), an almost impossible growth in body size, and a series of seemingly damning non answers in front of Congress. There is no leaked grand jury testimony; there is no tell all book with poorly researched claims that ring just true enough to garner an admission of guilt; there is no tainted test hidden away in a lab somewhere waiting to be exposed; there is no cancelled check with his name on it; there is no jilted quasi-personal trainer with an ax to grind.
Many of the players who have run afoul of baseball have had some way to earn back their respect and admiration. Rodriguez was able to perform in the playoffs and win a ring while not on steroids. Andy Pettitte benefitted by being linked with Clemens and immediately becoming the good guy in the whole sordid equation. He also went out and won a whole bunch of baseball games, which is the best way to have people forget how you once broke the rules. David Ortiz had a semi-plausible denial, but more importantly he followed it up with an offensive resurgence. Even Pete Rose has garnered enough sympathy to maybe get into the Hall of Fame one day to take the focus off of what he did to get banned in the first place. What exactly could McGwire do to erase the memory of PED use while he was still playing? Being the hitting coach on a World Series winning team isn’t exactly the stuff that legends are made of.
All of that being said, it is hard to think that Cardinals’ management and Bud Selig would allow the circus McGwire’s comeback would cause without receiving assurances that he would make some kind of mea culpa upon his arrival. A hitting coach, even one with 583 home runs, cannot be a season long distraction on a team with playoff hopes. The notoriously good natured and supportive St. Louis fans will surely give McGwire a pass on previous indiscretions whether he admits guilt or not. The harder sell will come from the media who surely will open the steroids wound again, much to Selig’s annoyance. The media will surely be ready to pounce on McGwire the second he steps foot on a baseball field for the first time.
The one way the media can take on their perceived role as the conscience of baseball is through Hall of Fame voting. For years, McGwire has been asking himself if the Baseball Writer’s Association of America would be more likely to accept him if he admits his steroid use or continues to deny it. The answer is it doesn’t matter. The “guardians of the game” will no doubt penalize McGwire no matter what he comes out with. Pettitte has been able to spark Hall of Fame talk with another strong postseason, but Big Mac doesn’t have the good will and good guy image that Pettitte has built up before and after his own PED scandal.
McGwire is firmly in the damned if you, damned if you don’t position. There is little benefit to coming out. He will be embraced by few outside of St. Louis and Oakland regardless of any admission of guilt or claims of innocence. Too many fans are intent on never forgetting those who ruined the sanctity of the game and Hall of Fame voters seem intent on punishing any user, or even any suspected user. McGwire is better off staying mum and letting everyone chatter until there is nothing left to say and the talk finally dies down.
