Choking Up At The Plate

This year, in his book Juiced, former teammate Jose Canseco wrote that he personally injected you with steroids. Then the New York Daily News, citing FBI informants, linked you to a confessed steroid dealer who allegedly shot you up with the drugs.

And there you were last Thursday, with Rep. William Lacy Clay (D., Mo.) asking, "Can we look at children with a straight face and tell them that great players like you play the game with honesty and integrity?"

You looked like a cat with a mouthful of feathers when you muttered, "I'm not here to talk about the past."

If it weren't so pathetic, it would've been funny. It was as if, like a cartoon lightbulb, a giant asterisk popped up over your head. If I were in St. Louis, I'd be thinking up a new name for that stretch of I-70 the state named after you. The Integrity Bypass, maybe?

The Mark McGwire I remember would've never turtled. That father, Donald Hooton, who testified earlier on Thursday that he believed steroids drove his 17-year-old son to kill himself, was right when he said, "Players that are guilty of taking steroids are not only cheaters--you are cowards."

And then you had the gall to tell Congress you'll do "everything in my power" to get the message out that "steroids are bad. Don't do 'em." Yeah, that ought to really fly with the teens.

Mr. McGwire, how do you know steroids are bad?

I'm not here to talk about the past, Billy.

I feel sorry for you, Mac. There are no bars, no ankle bracelet, yet you're a prisoner just the same. You broke baseball's coolest record and you can't talk about it. Maybe that's karma.

I know you. It's got to be sitting in your stomach like a bowl of razor blades. Last Thursday you kept insisting you could "turn this into a positive." O.K., you want to do something positive? Be that big man again. Tell the truth.