Is anyone surprised?
He says he used performance-enhancing drugs to stay healthy, because he was not healthy enough to play the game. And so, in 1993, according to McGwire, he resumed the use of steroids – something he says he initially tried in 1989 and 1990 to help his body.
He posted astonishing numbers in 1996, when he hit a career-high of 52 home runs, and then 58, and then a record-breaking 70 home runs in the summer of 1998.
But again, McGwire insists that the drugs didn't help his performance, rather that his performances were due to hard work and his God-given ability to hit a baseball.
McGwire also said in his statement that he doesn't recall the kind of steroids he took. That's unacceptable. Professional athletes' bodies are everything to them. How do they not know what is being put into them?
It does take courage for McGwire to be open and truthful. He is going to be the center of the media world by newspapers, ESPN, and almost every sports blogger on the Internet. There may even be a Saturday Night Live skit tearing him apart.
Regardless of what is next for McGwire, this admission will still not give him credibility in the eyes of fans.
McGwire should have, in the five years since he ducked questions from Congress, come clean – not for his benefit, but by working for the Taylor Hooton Foundation to raise money and awareness for anti-steroids education.
Instead, McGwire squandered so many opportunities to do the right thing.
