If anything, we should be upset that McGwire tried to pull a fast one on us. He wants to be recognized in a separate light than guys like Bonds or Roger Clemens so he came forward and copped to using. He admits making mistakes, but he still wants us to believe steroids didn’t help, which would be like Tiger Woods admitting that he slept with multiple women at once, but assuring us that he didn’t have any fun.
At its core, McGwire’s confession was no different than anyone else's. He was just fortunate to have a lot more time to come up with his story than Alex Rodriguez or Andy Pettitte had with theirs. He managed to tell us everything he wanted us to hear, which wasn’t quite the same as what we wanted to hear.
We wanted a glimpse of what the entire culture in baseball was like from someone not as slimy as Jose Canseco. But McGwire said he never talked about steroids with other players. We wanted him to tell us that steroids did help and maybe apologize to the guys who were ejected from the game because they didn’t want to inject themselves with steroids. Those are the guys we should feel sorry for. Instead, he just gave us a version of the same quote over and over.
"I wish I had never touched steroids."
But in the end, he never told us why.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
It sounds like his reasons for admitting it now was because he wanted to get it out of the way before this affected his job as a hitting coach for the Cardinals. You could smell the damage control from a mile away.
2 - NancyGail
At the time McGwire took HGH, it was allowed.