Mark McGwire

So Mark McGwire admitted to taking steroids today. Given that many people just assumed he used them the admission itself wasn't huge news, aside from his actually saying the words. That being said, I was stuck by the range of reactions to the news.

I heard two consecutive callers on the baseball talk station. The first expressed well articulated outrage at McGwire's opportunism in timing his admission right before he started his new job as hitting coach, and that he broke records by cheating and was unforgivable. The second said he didn't blame McGwire for not admitting his steroid use before Congress, because "(Congressman) Henry Waxman is just a liberal left-wing pig" (note to caller- you left out "Jew," but I know you were thinking it) and concluding that McGwire was innocent and only admitting using because that would make people stop asking him about it.

That about covers it. My personal opinion is that the guy was a cheater. That there were other cheaters around doen't make him any less so. His admission sounded very calculated to me. That being said, I don't think that disqualifies him from ever working in baseball again, so on a certain level, who cares? What's interesting to me is that Jose Canseco, who was absolutely roasted in the press and elsewhere for writing the book that blew the cover off the whole steroid thing, has now been pretty much 100% vindicated. Canseco also used steroids and is hardly an beacon of morality, but the one thing everyone who knew him well said was that he was not a liar, and the McGwire episode is the last thing in the book where his assertions had not yet been proven correct.

Can we get some real baseball soon?