November 29th, 2006 - Fer & ‘Agin

Spending the last two nights watching games down at the pub - my wife let me, I think I’ll keep her – most of the talk wasn’t about our hometown hockey team going into the tank, or the basketball guys getting their stuff together on the road. Instead, it was mainly focused on a feller who semi-unexpectedly retired five years ago and is now eligible for Baseball’s Hall of Fame. Mark McGwire’s name is on the ballot for entry into Cooperstown and now everyone has an opinion. However, since I was at the pub two nights in a row, I decided to have two...

Fer it on Monday

A survey done by the Associated Press of the Baseball Writers Association of America indicates that Mark McGwire will not make it into the Hall of Fame - this year anyway. Since I am not a member of that vaunted organization they never bothered to ask me, but if they had, on Monday I would have indicated that if I had a vote for this year’s crop – Big Red would have got mine, along with Tony Gwynn. (Cal Ripken wouldn’t, but that’s another column.) Not because of McGwire’s 70 home run season, though that helped. Nope, it was the 583 total that put him over the top. That’s in the top 10 and anyone who is in the top 10 in a major statistical category of any sport deserves recognition in that sports’ Hall of Fame.

And most importantly, he didn’t break any of the rules doing it.

He deserves to be there for sure – but these baseball men of good conscience will almost surely refuse to put someone in the Hall who they perceive as a cheater.

Even though he isn’t one. Pete Rose? Now there is a guy who doesn’t belong. He broke actual rules that were written on every clubhouse door in the game. Steroids were a nod and a wink in the game back then. Everyone knew who was taking them, and all reaped the benefits of the long ball, few more so than Mark McGwire. Besides the millions in salary and endorsements, he even had a freeway named after him.

The bottom line however is simple, short and sweet: Since he did nothing wrong when he was a player, how can anyone keep him out?

‘Agin it on Tuesday

Let me tell you why he should be kept out.

Mark McGwire hit 70 homers in 1998 and 65 the year after that. Then baseball, reacting to the growing groundswell of skepticism about who was on the juice and who wasn’t, began cracking down.

Is it a mere coincidence that as soon as MLB started getting semi-serious about performance enhancing drugs, Mark McGwire’s career essentially ended? I suspect knowing that he would be target #1 for a suddenly morally outraged media he went off the stuff, and then almost immediately there afterwards, started breaking down.

It’s ironic that he himself started the witch-hunt after a reporter, during a scrum, discovered something called androstenedione in McGwire’s locker. McGwire didn’t bother to hide it. He admitted using it, insisting it was legal. It was just a supplement. However, that supplement, which is in reality a pseudo-steroid, is now banned from the game.

In 1995, McGwire’s home run numbers went on an incredible upturn. It was like, after three years of decreasing productivity, he turned on a switch or something. Reversing the universal truth that the older you get, the less powerful you are, McGwire started putting up moon shots to places few had ever seen before.

We all jumped on the power bandwagon. Baseball promoted the hell out of it. “Chick’s dig the long ball” became the game’s mantra – and it all came to a head eight years ago with McGwire and Sammy Sosa battling head-to-head to be the first to surpass Roger Maris’ 61 homers.

McGwire was first. Both got the glory. Both shared Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year title.

Yet it is easy to separate then from now. Thinking of Mark McGwire now, I suspect the first image that pops into our collective skulls is his wussed-out appearance in front of the U.S. congressional committee where he pleaded the fifth. "I’m not here to talk about the past,” he said. 583 home runs made his reputation. Eight little words forever tarnishing it. If he had simply been a man and admitted taking steroids — and then said “but it wasn’t against the rules then” perhaps his admittance would be a sure thing.

However, he didn’t. It’s clear he wants to forget the past. He’s got good reason to. As for us, this vote is for entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame. That is a place all about the past.

Thus, Mark McGwire deserves a pass.

Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch

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