More Rants from the Couch
by Bill Ribas
So Mark McGwire finally comes out of the closet and admits to something we all knew, that he was a steroid user. Pardon me if we’re all not shocked by this, but it’s akin to Elton John admitting his sexual preference is for men, or Dale Earnhardt jr loves driving fast, or I can’t stand Joe Buck. But what is really at stake here? Anything? I mean, if we all knew he did it, what’s the difference?
Well, let’s look first at the statement by baseball commissioner Frank Grimes, er, I mean Bud Selig, where he says, “This statement of contrition, I believe, will make Mark’s reentry into the game much smoother and easier.” What?!?! Smoother and easier? What the heck does that mean?
But wait a second, look at Big Mac’s statement, where he says, “Now that I have become the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, I have the chance to do something that I wish I was able to do five years ago.”
According to Selig, it should now be easier for McGwire to get back into baseball, but according to McGwire, he’s already there. Now before we get too carried away, at this point I imagine Pete Rose cleaning his .357, just biding his time, talking to the Smith & Wesson like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, “Yes, my precious, soon it will be time to unleash your fury, my precious, and then they’ll see, they’ll see . . . ”
What is it about baseball, baseball management, and baseball fans all being the biggest hypocrites and biggest enablers in the world? It’s like a giant bowl of cereal, and you know what flavor? Dysfunctional codependent enabler flavor. Only in baseball can an apparent icon lie to everyone around him, including congress, and then, when he finally finds a job (and I’m guessing he doesn’t need to work, but that’s another paragraph), comes clean and admits to not only using illegal substances, but being stupid about it. So let’s address that point right away – McGwire says he didn’t use the drugs as performance enhancers, only to speed the recovery and healing process. Despite the obvious conflict in that statement, that’s like me telling you I only drink a case of beer on Sundays because of the need to hydrate. I didn’t know that it would screw up my balance, or that the reason I ordered a vintage stuffed Alf on Ebay for $1200 was because beer impaired my reasoning.
We look to athletes who exceed as role models, but what do you do with this? You know, If I took Metamucil every day, and suddenly I was running sub 4 minute miles, do you think you or I could make the connection? Apparently, McGwire can’t make that connection, and so we perceive him as just another dumb jock. And that’s another angle that baseball’s elite have taken, that they don’t know what’s in the shots they’re getting. But even the most moronic, idiotic, downright stupid player would have to understand the connection. Imagine this conversation:
Trainer: Take this shot.
Player: What is it?
Trainer: It’s to speed up healing.
Player. Okay.
(one month later)
Player: Hey, give me more of those shots. I raised my average 50 points, have hit more home runs in two weeks than I have all my career, and feel like ripping the heads off of animals and eating them raw.
Trainer: It’s not the shots, they’re just for healing.
Player: Really? Wow. Who knew.
Trainer: Yeah, wild huh? Now bend over.
If you’ve made a career out of your body, you don’t just let anything happen to it without your knowledge. You don’t acquiesce like a bloated, middle aged man whose doctor says, “hey, you need to take Lipitor the rest of your life,” and just nod and head to the drugstore with a prescription. Why not? Because you’re a type A athlete who needs the spotlight, who thrives on attention, and who can’t let go of the spotlight or the attention. So what if your retirement fund is at stake? So what if suddenly, you can’t do the card signing baseball conventions, or the baseball camps, what if you can’t pick up a six figure check for two hours work, then what happens?
You say you never took steroids. You get Bob Costas to interview you, and suddenly, you’re a Harvard chemist, saying you already had the talent, and the drugs didn’t do anything. But wait, then why are you crying? If that’s what you believed, then it shouldn’t be an issue, right? Then it should have been okay to tell congress, or anyone at ANY POINT IN TIME that you took them. Because you didn’t think you were doing anything wrong.
But with the lucrative options to a retired player, and a potential nesting place in the Baseball Hall of Fame, it’s a different story. Like the old Jon Lovitz lying character, McGwire has bent the truth to fit his needs, and now, apparently secure with a new job, hopes the press will soon blow over. For us, it’d be more like getting a job at Staples, and then on the first day letting your coworkers that, “Man, this is exciting. For so many years I’ve been stealing pens from where I work, but now with this job, I’ll be okay.”
It all gets so sickening when you hear Selig say things like, “I believe our drug testing program is the toughest and most effective in professional sports,” and then says, “You know what, Mac, shouldn’t be a problem getting you a job.” Instead, it’s more like a “remember when you got so hammered and did” story your college pals tell at reunions, something so funny yet no longer dangerous and now accepted. Bygones, right? Nothing like, you know, Mac, maybe you’d make a good hitting instructor and all, but you screwed up, and I’m going to give someone else a chance at that job, someone who didn’t shoot up.
So what happens next? Well, you tell your kid that guy in the Cardinals uniform used to be real skinny, then huge, and is now skinny again, and that drugs are okay, because it’s what you do to get in the record books and get the chicks that matters, and lying is okay, but what ever you do, don’t bet on a game, because that would negate everything you did, and cost you a lot of money. But drugs and lying are okay.
Wow…impressive…most impressive…
Gee, and all along I thought it was the milk. Man, now I have drank myself to lactose intolerance, and I have McGwire to thank. My arms still look like a pair of toothpicks. Wow, was I had. 🙂
Steroids can’t help hand to eye coordination? They sure do help bat speed which means the hitter can wait longer on a pitch before swinging.
Ah.. The fact that this is in the news again is making me sick. I am tired of this issue, but it keeps popping up and making itself relevant again.
My first reaction to the admission was – why now? Why come clean now. Was it because :
A): McGwire felt the need to come clean to add a little bit of credibility to his position as batting coach for the Cardinals?
B): Because the recent Hall of Fame vote show that he is no closer to getting into the Hall of Fame then Jon and Kate getting a Star on Hollywood Boulevard?
I would like to think it is more A then B, but I am leaning towards B.. to help his Hall of Fame chances. Thing is – I don’t think it helped. I heard an interesting argument today that makes a lot of sense. If McGwire really took them to help him get back on the field fine.. How many Home Runs did he hit because they helped him get back in the lineup? 100? 150? 200? Let’s go conservative and say it was 100.. Now instead of 583 Home Runs, he hits 483. Is that still Hall of Fame numbers? I am not so sure.
Has anyone listened to LaRussa in the last 24 hours? He might be losing a lot of credibility – potentially more the McGwire on this. How did he not know what was going on in the Oakland A’s clubhouse. He claims he knew nothing, but he didn’t have any suspicions? Did he and other managers spend most of their time with their heads up their you know what’s – looking for diamonds?
Then again, why are we reacting to this with such anger? Who didn’t know this was should have been the words coming out of his mouth since 2005. Who hasn’t made a joke about his, “I’m not here to talk about the past” speech ? We all knew this was coming and after so many players – why hasn’t the anger worn off.
I am not sure if anyone got a chance to listen to Dick Vitale this morning on the Mike & Mike show. I forgot how passionate he is about baseball. How he loves the game and how he labeled McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Bonds and ARod as cheaters. He said the biggest thing A-Rod and Manny have going for them – they are still playing. But he also said the fans are to blame. We enable them. We ask them to perform each and every night. We buy tickets and go to them games. We share in some of the blame. But in the end what these guys did wasn’t right and it was cheating.
” Where is Mrs. Hogwarts ?? ”
” Well Mrs. Hogwarts R-U-N-O-F-T”
“She must have been lookin’ for answers. ”
Hmmmm. Maybe we will hear from Bonds in 2010 and then we can all move on. Unfortunately, something tells me he will have to go through the HOF voting a couple of times before he comes clean. Which means we will be debating this for a long time.
You know, personally, I don’t care if they all took drugs. I say let’s encourage the drug use, maybe they’ll all die sooner, and that means your rookie card will pay for your retirement living that much earlier. But I think it’s the aura around baseball, as a sort of holy sport, that makes everybody wince when something bad happens.
In the same respect, you never hear stories from the minor league players who made 10k every year and never got the call up. Maybe they even tried drugs and didn’t get the results, because the other pros were that much better. So when Joe Buck (or any broadcast idiot) waxes poetically about America’s pastime, they’re not thinking of all those players left in the dust, they’re talking about the ones that made it.
But I digress. The real problem is us, people that is. Someone had to be the first to try steroids or horse piss or whatever, and another person had to know about it. Once that silent endorsement spread, there was no stopping it. I’m not going to rat on you, because you’ll rat on him and he on me and so on. And for a while it was all wink wink, we all know but we’re not saying.
The answer? If you’re a purist, you can’t elect anyone tainted to the hall of fame. So make a new wing for all the years in question, and play spooky music in it for all the crackheads who used drugs, and let’s move on. If as fans we want to see 100 home runs a year, and John T Player eats monkey testicles to achieve that, is that a problem? Not for me, because I don’t care that much about statistics that intensely. The difference between say, 50 and 51 home runs could be a tailwind, right?
So build a new wing to the HoF, treat players like lab rats and see what science can get out of drugs, and play ball, I say.
hahahahahahahahaah….first laugh out loud response for me….
Great stuff Bill…”Let John T Player eat monkey testicles…” – Classic
That was great, Bill! My two cents on this is short and sweet …
1) At least McGwire admitted he extensively used the stuff
2) I’m not buying his reasons for taking it
3) Coming clean does not make him a Hall of Famer
I believe, like many, that McGwire really didn’t need to be on PEDs to be a prolific HR hitter … but I think without them he would’ve been somewhere in the low 400’s, not at 583 (Smitty’s point above). With that in mind, was he any more than a latter day Frank Howard??
I ask myself one question, Why is there always a but in the admittance of steroid use?
A-Rod: I used steroids, BUT I only did it for one year.
McGwire: I used steroids, BUT only because I was getting injured too much.
But look on the bright side, at least he didn’t commit perjury.
This doesnt change anything for McGwire, but what about La Russa, he stuck his neck out on more than one occasion for him.
Is Canseco working on another book?
And I have to ask does anybody know anyone that does not hate Joe Buck?
I remember when McGwire first came up on the ballot, and he didn’t get elected. People were pretty sure it was just a matter of time. Now, it does not seem that way any more.
Gino – I think once Andy Pettite’s admission of the HGH came out and he came with the ” I did it to get healthy and back on the field” – the admission with a “but” became exceptable. Baseball fans could accept this explanation – I did it back on the field. Why? Because it is admirable and seems less like cheating.
Problem with McGwire’s explanation is that there is so many reports that are contrary to his explanation. “I used them to help me get back on the field?” Really? So why does the FBI have evidence of McGwire being on an extensive steroid schedule. When they use the phrase “horse levels”, you have to wonder how much of the stuff McGwire was pumping into his body.
Now we have a Canseco vs. McGwire in a “Guess who is lying” game. First off – why would anyone lie about going into a bathroom stall and injecting another person with steroids? Who makes that kinda stuff up?
Unfortunately, LaRussa is taking a pretty big hit with this.. Whether it is fair or not really depends on who you are asking.. Me? I don’t think it is fair, but I am one vote.
Quick information note – my wife is in the Sports Medicine field. She wrote a paper on roids and to my disbelief, it has been found to improve vision. I guess that’s not the complete part of hand-eye coordination, but thought you would find it interesting.
Smitty,
I don’t know who makes that up, but I’m just glad I wasn’t in the next stall.