Did Steroids Help McGwire Hit More Homeruns? Maybe.

The one item that people seem to be killing slugger Mark McGwire this morning is the suggestion that he made in last night’s Bob Costas interview that while he did take steroids, his homerun records are still on the up-and-up because the steroids did nothing to help him hit homeruns. McGwire cites previous seasons where he hit 40+ homeruns when he wasn’t taking steroids as evidence that his god-given ability is what helped him hit homeruns and not a syringe with magic power juice. While some, like Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Dispatch, are mocking Big Mac for thinking that “we could so naive to believe that”, I think it’s a suggestion that has to be considered.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark, commenting on McGwire’s interview, made an interesting point about the steroid issue in general stating, “I’ve long believed that we’ve always oversimplified the reasons that many players took PEDs.” And I have to say I agree. While I think it might be foolish for McGwire to suggest that taking steroids didn’t have any effect on his ability to hit balls further, it’s also as foolish to suggest that the only reason he hit as many homeruns as he did in 1998 is because of steroids. Just how many more homeruns did he hit because of steroids? 2? 5? 8? 70? The answer probably lies somewhere in muddy middle unfortunately, and we’ll never really know what Mark could have done without steroids.

In the end though, the summer of 1998 was a magical summer and it brought baseball back to the masses in a tantalizing way. Almost a decade later now, we’re finding out that the two primary characters in that summer drama, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, were taking steroids. Does that taint that experience a little? Sure. But that should just remind us that all men are fallen, prone to mistakes and finding out that people, even “good people” like Mark, shouldn’t surprise us.

Posted by Joshua Hynes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 10:44am. It has been filed under News, Sports, Writers, Joshua.

Comments

Okay. So only one person has cared enough to leave their two cents. How depressing! Especially considering all the trouble I went through posting this in the first place. Well you can leave a comment if you want. It might cheer me up.

Jajaja what a load of c… he is just a cheater a junkie preaching his drug is good, of course steroids help him to keep on making home runs he cheated tiredness and therefore the possibility to miss, mistake and tire his muscles. Junkies I hate them…

Susan wrote on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 6:44pm.