Mark McGwire

Diane,
I've been a Cardinals fan since I was little. In the '91 All Star game, Cardinals' Shortstop Ozzie Smith came out during the introductions and did his trademark backflip. I was sitting in my Uncle Bill's living room and took notice; The Cards were his favorite team, and now they were mine.
I've lived and died by the team for as long as I can remember. The agony of the '96 NLCS; The bitter playoff defeats in '04 and '05 when they were a great team, followed by the surprising World Series Championship in '06. I've loved players along the way; Ozzie Smith; Jim Edmonds; and like almost every other Cardinals' fan, Mark McGwire.
Yesterday was a tough one. McGwire went on TV and admitted to steroid use throughout his career, including during the magical 1998 HR record chase. I took him at face value when he said that he never took steroids, but I always wondered. I'm not surprised by this admission. There's alot of people calling him a cheater today, saying he's not a Hall of Famer, saying that he's one of the players that essentially started the steroids era in baseball. All of that may or may not be true, but after reading Jayson Stark's column on ESPN.com this morning, I had to weigh in.
Stark wrote:
... I found myself asking a question I'm sure millions of other Americans were asking:
Does this man really understand what he did?
Not just to himself. And not just to the people who cared about him and supported him.
To the sport.
To his sport.
To a sport that needed his magical summer of 1998 way more than McGwire now needs our forgiveness.
And to all the folks who got caught up in that special summer, let down their guard and basked in one of the most compelling sports stories of our lifetimes.
Does he really understand what he did to them?
I don't think he does. I don't think he gets it. He certainly gave us very little reason Monday to think he gets that part of this equation. Unfortunately for him, it's the most important part of all.
Reading this, I think it's a contradiction. Baseball was hurting. It needed a moment like this, and it needed it out of its biggest stars. Mark McGwire was one of them. The admission today does taint the summer of '98, but it doesn't change the feelings that people had at the time. Baseball was broken; the strike had killed the sport and it needed that resurgence. I remember every season articles would flood preseason previews about who might break Roger Maris' HR record; The pressure was constant and from all sides. McGwire was expected to be one of those chasing the record.
I can't help but thinking about Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men" and how his monologue fits here:
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Baseball needed the record broken and it needed to be done by a hero like Mark McGwire. You can look back now and say that it was cheating and the whole record is cheapened by steroids, but baseball needed the Summer of '98. This moment where we revise history and how we look upon the MLB record books can only happen because the sport is on solid footing in our culture. Like it or not, McGwire is a big reason for that.