Mark McGwire: Counterpoint

It may be a bad idea to post my thoughts on Mark McGwire’s steroid use immediately after the Squid Bandit has done the same thing—it runs the risk of boring those readers who suffer from underdeveloped attention spans or (as a less insulting option) don’t like baseball—but my hope is that going head-to-head with our opinions might generate some good discussion on the topic, even if it’s just between the two of us.¹ And I’m also going to use a fun picture. Who doesn’t like pictures?

I can’t say that I was particularly surprised when I heard that McGwire had admitted to using steroids² off and on for the bulk of his sixteen-year career. His size, his incredible power at an age when most power hitters’ strength and batspeed have begun their clear decline, his evasive testimony before Congress, the accusations made by both Jose Canseco and McGwire’s younger brother (a bodybuilder and admitted steroid user), and the twelve to fifteen baseballs he hit into geostationary orbit all made the notion of Mac-the-steroid-user seem not just believable but even obvious to most folks with more than a passing interest in the game.

I have mixed feelings about his confession. I admire him for his willingness to face the nation—or, if not the entire nation, at least his competitors; his past, current, and future employers; and the fans whose support allowed him to make a living—and admit that he’d failed, that he did cheat not only the game of baseball but also its fans, whether they cheered for him or his opponents. Even if he was merely confirming what so many of us suspected (and thus not doing as significant damage to his reputation), it takes a big man to admit that.³ While I don’t know McGwire at all and certainly can’t tell what’s going on in his head, I’m inclined to believe that his shame and his relief at the truth coming out are genuine.

At the same time, though, his mea sorta culpa is still self-serving, coming as it does several years after the statute of limitations for prosecution had expired, and mere weeks before he’s scheduled to start work as the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitting coach. In short, Mark McGwire ducked the question when there was something to lose, kept quiet when there was nothing on the line, and piped up only when there was clearly much to gain.

What bothers me more than that, though, comes not from McGwire but from media sources—like Rob Neyer, in the article to which Squid Bandit referred—implying or outright stating that to criticize a cheater for cheating is somehow sanctimonious or hypocritical:

You may, if you like, continue to summon from your wellspring of self-righteousness the energy to condemn McGwire for doing what so many of his peers were doing, all in the interest of earning a good living and fulfilling his widely considered destiny.

If Neyer sees it as self-righteous to disapprove of one cheater's cheating, he can take solace in the fact that I'll disapprove of the rest of them when I find out who they are. And I’m sorry, but “all the cool kids were doing it” has not, as far as I can tell, ever been an effective argument. Neither is Neyer’s admission that he’d be tempted to cheat to make himself a better writer (I think the next step up from sportswriting is want ads, right?), or the argument (not put forth by Neyer or Squid Bandit, but one that you can’t help but read if you tune into the discussion) that “you’d do it to if you had a chance.” And I disagree with the notion that “if you [aren’t] cheatin[g], you [aren’t] tryin[g].”⁴ The opposite seems more obviously true: if you’re cheating, it’s because you’re less willing to try; you're looking not for the way to do things right, but the way to do things quick and (relatively) easily.

McGwire wishes he “had never played during the steroid era.” I take this at face value, and I accept what I feel is the genuine emotion behind it, but I believe it’s also a cop-out. A lot of folks looked at Mark McGwire as a bit of a hero—at least in that very limited, silly way in which athletes can be heroes—when he hit his boatload of home runs in 1998. He’d have been much more genuine a hero, though, if he’d had the backbone to stay clean in his era, the heart to do what was right when it really would have mattered, instead of when it’d do little more than clear his conscience and help him get back to a steady paycheck in the game he did his own small part to corrupt.

NOTES
1. The other risk worth considering, of course, is that by disagreeing with Squid Bandit on this issue, we risk creating an un-healable schism between readers torn by our compelling points of view and our irresistible personal charisma. It’s possible that in a thousand years, conflicts between the Someguyists and the Squidinistas (or possibly the Squindus, or the Squislims) will tear our society apart, all because of the tensions created right here at this very moment.
2. I use the word “steroids” throughout as an umbrella term to describe any performance-enhancing drug, including androstenedione, which was legal when McGwire used it in 1998; while there are plenty of differences between the varying types of PEDs, I don’t really know or understand them, and for my purposes they’re not particularly relevant.
3. But not an unnaturally big man, of course, as that’s what got him into all this trouble in the first place.
4. Grammar and spelling have been corrected to show, yet again, that I’m an anal-retentive butthole.