Say it ain’t so, Big Mac
It can’t happen. I can’t believe it. I won’t be deprived of one of the greatest moments in modern sports history, the true “Where Were You When?” that was McGwire blasting homerun number 62 off Steve Trachsel in September of 1998. Even though McGwire’s place in history was far from assured as he battled down the stretch with Sammy Sosa, the moment that McGwire’s dying quail of a liner snuck over the leftfield wall at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium sparked a celebration and a scene 37 years in the making. The great Maris mark had been toppled, and baseball had a great hero again. Or did it?
The news that I have dreaded for a couple years now has hit the street: According to ESPN, Mark McGwire “has emerged as a prominent figure of a month-long investigation by the New York Daily News.” McGwire was not a target of the investigation, but two steroid dealers told the newspaper that they supplied a number of players with anabolic steroids. Included on the list were McGwire and recent tell-all author Jose Canseco.
The Daily News said an informant told the paper that a California man named Curtis Wenzlaff injected McGwire on several occassions [sic] at a gym in Southern California. A former member of the gym where McGwire and Wenzlaff allegedly worked out together told the paper that he heard the two discuss steroids.
According to one of the informants, who the FBI said provided credible information throughout its probe, McGwire’s regimen reportedly included injecting himself in the buttocks once every three days with two testosterone substances and weekly with another.
Even keeping in mind that these are only allegations at this point, and that McGwire’s mouthpiece has urged the public to consider the source, this is a devastating piece of news for the baseball world and for all McGwire fans. As rumors swirl around likely future career homerun king Barry Bonds, it’s a painful blow to see McGwire, the man who helped bring the fans back to the game after the 1994 strike, tarred by such allegations.
McGwire has always denied that he used steroids, and Canseco’s people have called into question the timing of Wenzlaff’s statements. But even if Wenzlaff is a stone-cold liar, this sort of thing calls the whole game into question. There is no other sport in which tradition and statistical milestones have such significance. An assault on 61 or 755 homers needs to be clean and legitimate for the game to maintain its integrity. People often point out that many players throughout baseball history have resorted to dirty tactics. Ty Cobb was a racist and an assassin of middle infielders (Cobb loved to spike), but none of that had anything to do with The Georgia Peach’s ridiculous .367 career batting average. Steroids are staining the game’s most important statistics, and are rocking baseball tradition to its core.
I believe that McGwire’s 70 homeruns in 1998 were more important than the 73 hit by Bonds just a few years later to claim the record for himself. McGwire broke the fabled record; Bonds just bettered him in a launching pad of a ballpark. If McGwire can stay clear of the Scarlet “S”, I can live with the fact that Bonds may have been juiced for a number of his homers. Nobody likes Barry Bonds. But McGwire seems like a good guy. He and Sammy Sosa handled themselves admirably during the 1998 season. Big Mac’s pudgy kid was always running around there with a big smile on his face. It was just a neat thing to watch. It was either a Golden Age of baseball or the present-day Black Sox. It almost all hinges on McGwire.
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Baseball Musings
Nathan Novak at 1:22 am
