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Hey, Mac, Do What Comes Naturally
SI's Rick Reilly: Hey, Mac, Do What Comes Naturally
Posted: Tuesday March 02, 1999 03:37 PM
This season, wouldn't it be cool if Mark McGwire crushed a hundred?
Better yet, five hundred? A thousand?
Wouldn't it be perfect if today, right now, before the season is even crawling,
he reached into his locker, took out his bottle of androstenedione, opened the
childproof cap, dumped all the pills on the floor of the St. Louis Cardinals'
clubhouse in Jupiter, Fla., and crushed every one of them under his cleats?
You talk about heroic. That would be
heroic.
I don't think a single dinger McGwire hit last year can be directly traced to
andro, the testosterone-producing supplement that he takes before workouts and
is banned by the IOC, the NFL and the NCAA. I think it was a raptor's eye, a
killer's swing and an XXL heart, not andro, that produced all those homers. But
a lot of other people disagree. In fact a lot of kids do. A lot of teenage boys
who are getting ready for the high school baseball season are at their nearby
vitamin and supplement store right now pooling their snow-shoveling money to buy
it.
Some doctors think taking andro is a very dangerous thing. Some doctors think
it's a dangerous thing for grown men, much less teenage boys. Anytime you're
putting 10 times the normal amount of anything in your body, it doesn't take
Marcus Welby to know you're asking for trouble. Right now, Mark McGwire might be
America's No. 1 sports hero and its No. 1 health hazard.
Just the normal amount of testosterone has gotten more teenage boys into trouble
than fake I.D.'s. Imagine if they all start taking a pill that increases their
testosterone level. We know that excess testosterone may eventually stunt
growth, slow puberty, lead to sterility and cause liver disease, heart problems,
acne, fits of rage, baldness and the development of breasts in men. Is that the
effect McGwire wants on American youth baseball? That every kid wear a jock and
a C
cup?
McGwire once told me, "If they want to put a warning on andro, like
cigarettes, then I'm all for it." But a warning label means zilch to a
teenage first baseman trying to become the next Big Mac. There are warning
labels on the bottoms of skateboards
too.
Quitting isn't admitting he was nuked up last year. It doesn't put an asterisk
on the 70. It doesn't mean he cheated. He didn't. What he did was 100% legal and
within the rules of baseball. But now with Michael Jordan gone, McGwire becomes
the king sports role model in the country. Legal he left behind a long
time ago. Now he's stuck with
right.
It's funny about McGwire. He's a wonderful, compassionate man. He's one of the
great divorced dads in America. He hardly touches alcohol. He won't smoke. He
champions abused
kids.
So why does he let so many kids harm themselves just to be like Mac? In the
early '90s a study found that 6.6% of male high school seniors had tried an
illegal steroid. After a summer when McGwire owned highlight shows, how many kids
will now be on what is essentially a legal steroid?
McGwire ought not wait for the upcoming report from two Harvard researchers to
Major League Baseball on andro's effects on the body. He ought to quit now. The
AMA would throw him a parade. As the father of a 14-year-old boy, so would
I.
I believe McGwire when he says he takes andro only to help him work out harder
and recover from injury faster. I believe him when he snips that if andro helps
you hit 70 home runs, why isn't everybody down at Gold's Gym hitting 70? Fine.
So stop just for us curious. Hit home runs that land in row 213 instead of 215.
Bench one farm animal less. Mac has always said andro doesn't make a difference.
So show
us.
McGwire's not going to hit 70 home runs this year. I don't care if he's
mainlining Valvoline, he's not going to hit 70. It's like catching back-to-back
syzygies or someone's carving another Mount Rushmore.
But McGwire could hit 50, and that would give him an astounding four straight
seasons with 50 or more. How cool would it be to say he hit 50 with andro and 50
without? How cool would it be to show the world he really wasn't Mark
McGwired? If he did that, they might just have to start another Rushmore.
What McGwire did last season was the single greatest athletic achievement in
American history. He doesn't have anything to prove to me. But his son, Matt,
will be a teenager soon. Doesn't Mark have something to prove to
him?
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