Do you remember Mark McGwire? He used to be one of America’s Baseball Darlings back in the days when sluggers looked more like football players and pro wrestlers than the football players and pro wrestlers did. He’s the guy who went from a lanky and wiry six foot five inches, 225-pounder to a bulked up 275-plus pounder at the end of his days as a player.
He’s a guy who in five years hit almost half of the total home runs (284) that he hit during his entire 16-year career (583). He’s a guy who did the big fizzle – due to injuries - at the age of 36, and was so ineffective at the end of his career that he had to be pinch hit for during the playoffs.
McGwire is the guy who made a fool of himself in front of the United States Congress back in the spring where – sounding like the weatherman character Brick Tamland from the Ron Bergundy movie – he repeated over and over “I’m not here to talk about the past.”
During the Congressional Hearings McGwire spoke passionately about how he was going to redirect the efforts of his foundation for neglected and abused children to help tackle the problem of kids and steroids. Click here to read an excellent piece by ESPN.com’s Darren Rovell in which we learn that McGwire’s foundation is not what he made it seem to be, and how McGwire’s foundation has not made any real efforts in this direction despite his public statements. Nice guy.
Now on the occasion of the closing of St. Louis’ Busch Stadium the incredible shrinking McGwire has told us that he will never speak about the steroid issue again. He also admonished the media, saying that the media “have been very negative towards me and that's your job, but I'm a very positive person and I've moved on."
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Article comments
1 - DG
Have your mistakes thrown in your face on a daily basis and tell me if you enjoy talking about it non-stop. Good grief, if he did or didn't, it makes NO difference. Baseball is a game, period. National security was not comprimised, children didn't starve, elderly people were not thrown out in the street because McGwire may have juiced a little bit. Move on to a subject more important and relevant than talking about a retired ball player's choices of training aids.