Mark McGwire Confirms What We All Knew

On Monday, Mark McGwire finally came clean and admitted that he used performance enhancing drugs throughout his career, including during the memorable 1998 season.

This admission does absolutely nothing because everyone who considers themselves a baseball fan seemed to know that McGwire used steroids. This admission is far too late to do any good for McGwire’s image. If McGwire was to be forgiven, he should have admitted to using steroids and asked for forgiveness at the hearings in Washington five years ago.

Mark McGwire has spent the last five years calling everyone liars and avoiding questions about steroids. Throughout those five years there have been plenty of athletes that admitted to cheating, such as Alex Rodriguez and Andy Pettitte, who were forgiven by the American public. McGwire was able to see that the public was forgiving of stars that admitted their wrongs. Instead of learning from the example set by others, McGwire sat back and continued to avoid questions and maintain his innocence. Mark was hoping to fall out of the public eye and is only admitting this now, not because he feels bad, but because he is back in the media as the hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals.

The timing of this story is very interesting. It comes so shortly after the Hall of Fame voting and the announcement that McGwire may be used as a pinch-hitter during the playoffs. McGwire may have felt that he only received  23.7% of the Hall of Fame votes because of the cloudiness that surrounded his career. By clearing up and answering all the questions McGwire can only HELP his Hall of Fame chances.

The low percentage of votes show that the voters do not respect McGwire and that they feel he is not worth of a spot in Cooperstown. It can be safely assumed that many voters did not vote for him because of the assumption that he used steroids. After seeing how others were forgiven, McGwire hopes that his apology and admission will help him gain credibility amongst the Hall of Fame voters.

While he ultimately did the right thing, some feel that it may be too little too late. Some are happy with the admission while some are questioning why it took so long. Americans are generally forgiving of their athletes and McGwire’s forgiveness will come, it is now just a matter of when and whether or not the Hall of Fame Voters will forgive him in the same way that the public will.