Mark McGwire Wishes He Never Played in the Steroid Era.

The first thing I thought of when I found out that Mark McGwire took steroids was a scene from the movie Out Cold. Lance, the obvious gay bartender, who has been hiding his homosexuality finally admits at the end of the movie his true sexual orientation. It was no secret, we all knew he was gay.

The same goes with McGwire and steroids. At this point, who didn’t know?

If you ever wondered before 2005 whether or not McGwire ever dabbled with illegal performance enhancing drugs, his testimony in front of Congress should have done it for you.

It’s really disheartening to keep hearing about things like this. I remember the great home run chase of 1998 and now it’s been known for a while that both of the men involved with it, accomplished everything that they did that season, illegally.

It just irritates me off that when I think of people who had great power seasons in the late 90′s and early 2000′s that the majority of those people cheated. The greatest pitcher of my generation(Roger Clemens) and the best hitter of my generation(Barry Bonds) have both taken steroids, sweet. It’s funny to see all these player deny these allegations until they are blue in the face, but once your name is linked with steroids, that label sticks with you forever.

It was McGwire who basically got the ball rolling on this whole steroids witch hunt. Creatine, which is now a legal supplement, was found in his locker in 1998 by reporter, but the supplement was so new to everyone that people started to begin wondering what other supplements athletes like McGwire had been taking to increase muscle mass. Today we found out that it he did take the juice and even experimented with human-growth hormone.

I hate writing about this because it pisses me off so bad. McGwire wished that he never played in the steroid era, as if someone held a gun to his head. Could there be a more lame cop out then that? You made your millions of dollars, does anyone believe that any of these athletes are actually sorry? Slaps on the wrist and they continue to get paid millions. (see: Rafael Palmiero, Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds, Andy Pettite, Brian Roberts, Ryan Franklin, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, the list goes on)

McGwire added this in regard to his steroid use:

“You don’t know that you’ll ever have to talk about the skeleton in your closet on a national level,” he said. “I did this for health purposes. There’s no way I did this for any type of strength use.”

If Mark McGwire thinks, for any reason, that people are gonna believe that crap, he’s got to be kidding. Just like athlete’s could not care less about getting found out, myself, as a fan of baseball, does not care for your pity story. You took something you knew would help you gain a competitive advantage, I’m not buying in your sob story.

It feels as if the media and fans have backed off players because they expect to hear that they have taken steroids at this point, and that’s unfortunate because as a sincere fan of baseball, it taints it for me.

With all that said, the sport goes on. Time heals all wounds, and fans will latch on to the next big star in waiting, hoping and praying, that they are accomplishing everything on the field without the help of a few needles.

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