Sports Byline USA Insight

Hey Mark McGwire, Was it Worth It?

I’ve known Mark McGwire since their rookie year with the Oakland A’s. I covered the team and was impressed with McGwire’s intelligence and commonsense look at life and his sport. He went to USC and his parents were successful professionals. He wasn’t a dumb jock baseball player. That’s what makes his finally admitting he used steroids and HGH over a nearly a 10 year period puzzling. The puzzling part is not only why it took him this long to fess up, but also McGwire simply calling his cheating a mistake.

Mistakes are things people do accidentally or do on purpose once or several times before admitting they did it a short time later. McGwire used steroids and HGH for nearly TEN years. That’s not a mistake that’s a strategy for cheating for nearly 10 years. McGwire and other athletes who used the “juice” have rationalized their use saying there wasn’t a MLB rule against it, or others were doing it. But, in the early 1990s there was a MLB memo telling players and teams it was illegal. Also, steroid/HGH use is criminally illegal without a doctor’s permission. If McGwire’s justification is others were doing it, well that only reminds me of my parents scolding me for doing something stupid, saying, “Well, if Johnny jumps off the roof does that mean you will too?” McGwire is too smart, too educated and too aware to not know what he was doing was wrong, not just a mistake. But, even worse was his doing it for such a long period of time. That’s not just looking for an edge or to help him overcome injuries, that’s an ongoing plan to cheat and to accomplish goals and records he likely wouldn’t have accomplished otherwise. He cheated Roger Maris out of his deserved single season home run record and he cheated the fans that paid and followed his efforts to do so thinking it was an honest effort.

Life moves on and so do McGwire and this sordid affair. Big Mac will still be loved in St. Louis where he hit many of those tainted, record breaking home runs. In time the fan catcalls and the damning media criticism will become an afterthought. But, in the final analysis McGwire will be left to live with his thoughts and memories of what he did and how he did it. He will always have to live with the fact that he cheated, he dishonestly broke Maris’ record and if he ever does make it to the Hall of Fame, that his efforts that got him there are tainted. He may be a Hall of Famer, but in name only. The efforts that may get him there will forever be debated, challenged and questioned. That will not be an easy thing for Mark McGwire to live with.

I’m Ron Barr.

Ron Barr is an Emmy award winning writer and the host of the nationally and internationally syndicated sports talk show, Sports Byline USA.

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