Regardless
of how much horse testosterone he may have injected into his scrotum,
how many times he might have injected gorilla hormones into Jose
Canseco’s ass or how many times he supposedly had to have his
girlfriend pop the zits on his back, Mark McGwire should be preparing
his acceptance speech for his induction into Cooperstown instead of
hiding inside his gated community in Irvine.
However, the very scribes and arbiters of greatness who praised McGwire
not 10 years ago for helping to save their beloved game now have the
nerve to turn their back on him because he allegedly used steroids and
exercised his fifth-amendment right when questioned about steroid use
by a Congress so corrupt and misguided (steroids over an inquiry into
the war in Iraq?) that Jose Canseco was the most honest man in the
chamber that day.
Baseball is, and always has been, a brutal sport dominated by ruthless
business practices and shady characters. Some of its greatest icons
have been rewarded by blatant subjectivity and, for its first 80 years,
it was a sport plagued by virulent racism.
It is a game lorded over by venal, self-righteous owners who bask in
the glow of “the national pastime.” Yet, as a rule, they shy away from
responsibility when problems arise. They have enjoyed exemption from
anti-trust regulations and held cities hostage, forcing public funding
of the palaces that their teams play in. When it was found that a
majority of the game’s athletes were using performance-enhancing drugs
for the better part of two-decades, the owners, who enjoyed record
profits and chose to ignore obvious steroid use, blamed the players for
everything. So sadly, it is perfectly fitting that someone like Mark
McGwire will never enter the game’s Hall of Fame.
McGwire came up with the Oakland A’s as a tall, skinny kid from USC
with a shock of red hair and a big, looping, powerful swing. During his
rookie year, however, he showed a home run swing that was as lethal as
it was beautiful. Smacking 49 home runs in 1987, he shattered the
rookie home run record and was the unanimous American League Rookie of
the Year.
Along with Jose Canseco, McGwire was part of one of the most
devastating slugging tandems in the history of baseball. Canseco and
McGwire also allegedly became one of the great pairs of
steroid-injecting butt-buddies in baseball history. According to
Canseco, they used to inject one another in the toilet with the full
knowledge and consent of then-manager Tony LaRussa. And, with the young
sluggers suddenly taking on the physiques of Hawk and Animal, how could
ownership or the press have suspected a thing?
After the cancellation of the 1994 World Series gave everyone a reason
to find something else to do during his or her summers like fuck,
drink, party and light shit on fire, baseball went in the shitter.
Then back came McGwire, wielding a bat that looked like a bear femur.
In 1996, aged 33 and bigger than ever after a career plagued by
mysterious injuries, he started to slug at a prodigious rate. Over a
two-year span he clubbed 110 home runs, a total surpassed only by Babe
Ruth.
By the time McGwire was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1997, he
was a hulk of a man. More carnival sideshow freak than ballplayer, he
was a one-act geek incapable of the clutch hit or moving a man over;
only able to hit meaningless tape measure home runs and draw countless
walks from frightened second-rate pitchers while his team languished in
the middle of the standings.
At best, he was an incredible looking, one-dimensional hitter incapable
of being the best player on his team. At worst, he was a defensive
liability, an awful base runner and a free-swinger prone to striking
out against superior pitchers. Completely unable to deliver an
extra-base hit that was not a home run, McGwire was, at best Dave
Kingman with a better attitude and special sauce, thus making him more
of an asset at the box office than on the field.
Meanwhile, his head was visibly larger, making his eyes appear to sink
into his skull. His legs were reminiscent of an offensive lineman’s and
made his pants look as if they would rip open if sat down. His arms
rivaled those of many body-builders and allegedly his nuts were
shrinking because they began to stop producing testosterone. He was
openly compared to Paul Bunyun instead of a female East German swimmer
and he was affectionately called “Big Red” by slobbering sports writers
who openly lusted for his withered loins. However, looking back,
everyone in a position of responsibility says, “Steroids? Who knew? ”
In 1998, fans, the sporting press and opposing players alike openly
fawned over him during batting practice. He rocketed moon shots into
upper decks and outfield parking lots with regularity and when the ball
met his bat, bystanders let loose with pornographic moans while those
who covered him spewed symbolic ejaculations from their pens.
Later, after a bottle of Androstenedione (a well known substance used
by ‘roid freaks during recovery periods after workouts) was seen in his
locker by a sportswriter the press went to his defense en-masse
explaining away its presence as a red herring and noting that there was
absolutely no proof that McGwire was using steroids or any other
performance enhancing drugs. The story was too important to spoil.
With fannies in the seats and the Roger Maris chase on with Sammy Sosa
as McGwire’s shucking and jiving sidekick, we had two sideshow freaks
that lit up the midwestern summer sky and inspired every baseball
reporter in America to write middle-school-quality love letters. No one
ever made reference to either man’s enormous physique except to fawn
over the two hitters like eager bottoms at an orgy.
Sports
Illustrated, one of the last bastions of quality sports journalism left
in the US, swooned, featuring McGwire on its cover no less than nine
times that summer and naming him Sportsman of the Year along with Sammy
Sosa. Writer Richard Hoffer extolled the virtues of the home run as
uniquely American while Tom Verducci called McGwire baseball’s “head of
state” and “the rightful heir to one of the sport’s greatest crowns”
and praised “his humility and respect for the game.” However, the
high-water mark of drool on McGwire’s cock came courtesy of Mike Lupica
who wrote a best seller, The Summer of ’98, in which he called
McGwire “the right-handed Babe Ruth” and essentially argued that
McGwire saved baseball and brought America home.
By
the time he retired after the 2001 season, McGwire’s body was battered
and broken. There were no more surgeries to fix his problems and no
amount of magic potions and chemical concoctions could bring back the
speed and power of his swing. His muscles had worn out his ligaments
and his famously balky back betrayed him every time he swung a bat.
When he departed from the game the countdown to McGwire’s induction
into Cooperstown began. In the eyes of everyone, only two numbers and
one memory mattered, 70 and 583 (his single season home run-high and
his career home run total) and his nationally televised love-in with
the Maris family in St. Louis when he broke Roger’s record.
However, within four years, it was all gone. Shortly after Barry Bonds
broke McGwire’s record in 2001, the drumbeat began to persecute any
ballplayer who used steroids. With Bonds’ surly personality and
publicly reprehensible behavior, the press began to start questioning
Bonds after an FBI agent in the bay area made it his personal mission
to bring charges against Bonds simply because he did not like him as a
person and a ballplayer. The criticism only began to reach McGwire when
the hand of the media was forced by charges of racial favoritism.
Take this to the bank; if Bonds had not broken McGwire’s record, everything would still be stuffed awkwardly under the carpet.
By 2005, Jose Canseco had released his now famous book, Juiced, and
implicated an enormous number of superstars that included McGwire and
the patron saint of the flaccid member, Rafael Palmeiro, who was
approaching the hallowed 500-home run mark himself.
LaRussa
jumped to McGwire’s defense. In a 2005 interview with 60 Minutes
LaRussa exemplified the pinnacle of denial in regards to McGwire’s
alleged steroid use. “It’s fabrication,” said LaRussa. “The product of
our good play and strength of our players — Mark was a great example —
what we saw was a lot of hard work. And hard work will produce strength
gains and size gains” then went on to call Canseco a bald-faced liar.
Right Tony, McGwire and Canseco’s size gains were only coincidental.
While Canseco was on an aggressive 12-week cycle of testosterone,
Trenbolone Acetate, Masteron, Anavar and Arimidex or HGH, Winstrol,
Deca-Durabolin and Clomid, McGwire was eating spinach and drinking
protein shakes.
In
reaction to Canseco’s book and the public outcry on the sports pages, a
callow and corrupt Congress turned its focus to bringing the hammer
down on baseball, and specifically the player’s union, by calling
McGwire, Palmeiro, Sosa, Canseco, union head Don Fehr, and Bush
apologizer and self-proven mouth-breather, Curt Schilling on the carpet
to answer for the sins of baseball.
After testimony given by the grieving parents of teenage ballplayers
who committed suicide during one of the violent mood swings steroids
have been known to cause, McGwire appeared. Shaken and about 40 lbs.
lighter than his playing weight, he was asked by Congress about his own
steroid use With no guarantee of immunity from federal prosecution,
McGwire did what any thinking person would do; he avoided the question
and famously said, “I am not here to talk about the past” and then
explicitly said that Canseco was not to be trusted simply because he
had a criminal record.
Almost
immediately afterwards, America’s most esteemed baseball writers began
to turn their backs on McGwire and write editorials about how much he
disappointed them. Mike Lupica, who helped anoint McGwire the game’s
savior, went to so far as to say that if he knew then what he knew now,
he would have gone after McGwire the same way others have gone after
Bonds. He has even gone so far as to say he will not vote for McGwire’s
induction into the Hall.
Bullshit. Lupica and the rest of them chose to ignore what a lot of
people saw, a steroid fueled mongoloid belting easy cheese over short
porches in left field. Or did they think it was normal for
players to peak dramatically in their mid and late-thirties as they
suddenly require larger helmets?
Baseball
never had any rules against the use of steroids and frankly, no one
gave a shit until Jose Canseco, one of the most reviled players to ever
wear a uniform, spoke out because he felt he had been blackballed and
prevented from going for 500 home runs himself.
The clucking of tongues has been incessant ever since. For heaping
praise on a “cheater,” most of the baseball writers with Hall of Fame
votes are saying that they will not vote for McGwire and backing it up
with florid diatribes against cheating and misguiding the nation’s
youth.
One of the more disgusting examples comes courtesy of San Jose
Mercury News columnist Ann Killon who wrote, “All I can do is cast my
own vote judiciously and be able to look my kids in the eyes when I do
it.” in a blatant attempt to absolve herself of having rooted for
McGwire in the first place.
It’s all horseshit and they all know it. If Congress had not threatened
to take away its anti-trust exemptions and threatened to break the
player’s union, baseball never would have lifted a finger to change its
steroid policy. And the real start of this whole escapade was not
Canseco, but Bonds’ having the nerve to pass Big Red only three years
after he set the record.
This whole farce has nothing to do with protecting the integrity of the
game, restoring the public’s faith in baseball or re-establishing the
game’s holy covenant with wide-eyed children who adore the game’s
stars. It’s about covering the game’s ass so no one ever has to accept
a simple reality in public: For players, owners and writers alike,
baseball is a business, not a game.
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