“Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era,” says Mark McGwire, admitting at last what everyone already knew—that he drugged himself silly in the era of his greatest success in baseball.
Over at the Washington Post, Tracee Hamilton has the right response:
The steroid era isn’t something that happened to Mark McGwire. Mark McGwire was one of the driving forces behind the steroid era. Heck, he was—and perhaps still is—the poster boy of the steroid era.
The steroid era isn’t like the Great Depression. Grandma can complain about living through the Great Depression because she didn’t cause it. Richie Petitbon, on the other hand, can’t complain about living through the Richie Petitbon era. You see the difference
January 13th, 2010 | 2:39 pm
Moreover, McGwire is confusing technology with character. I would suggest that given what we know of him, in another “era” he would only have found another time-appropriate way to cheat. Both nobility and weakness inhere to the individual, not to society.
If I could quote Tolkien/Gandalf in Lord of the Rings — The Fellowship of the Ring: “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Neither our salvation nor our damnation will hinge on when we live. It will, instead, depend on how we live. Mark McGwire made his choices in this regard — and bad moral choices they were. He benefitted handsomely in money and prestige. I find his “admission” more an attempt to get back into baseball than true contrition.
That said, only God knows his heart. And God will certainly forgive him. He must, however, recognize the corrosive effect his 1) use of steroids, 2) encouragement of fellow baseballers to use steroids, and 3) the message his behavior sent more broadly damaging and even ending many, many young lives. Confession is between him and God. His public statements to date seem weak and lacking in sincerity.
January 13th, 2010 | 7:01 pm
McGwire may be the new poster boy for the steroid era, but that he was ever “one of the driving forces” behind it is doubtful.
What distinguishes him from the (probably) hundreds of his peers who were also juicing is that he had more talent. His baseline power was already enough to make him a threat to break the single-season home-run record. Steroids put him over the top.
Ballplayers with less talent have commented that they juiced because the practice was so prevalent that, if they didn’t, they’d be at a disadvantage. In a baseball universe where everyone is clean, the likes of McGwire and Bonds would stand out. They stand out all the same in a baseball universe where everyone juices.
McGwire would be a hero if he resisted the culture of steroids. Instead, he went with the flow when the flow involved taking substances that, like narcotics, were illegal though, at that point, not explicitly banned by his employer, MLB. He and his peers could rationalize.
Looking at this from the outside, we might assume we’d have the spine to do the right thing. I’m not so sure I would. That’s why I don’t sneer at or dismiss McGwire’s comment that he wishes he “had never played during the steroid era.” Like the rest of us, he may have been praying not to be led into temptation, but led into it he was, and he failed in the face of it. There but for the grace of God.
January 14th, 2010 | 4:57 pm
Poor McGwire. How he’s struggled. We should pay guys like him more money to ease the burden.
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