Mark McGwire’s new job

     It looks like Mark McGwire will be the new hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals. This is a great opportunity. It’s too bad Mark McGwire doesn’t deserve it.

If you watched Mark McGwire testify before Congress, any doubts you might have had about potential steroid use were confirmed. He didn’t deny using illegal substances, and from what I’ve seen, didn’t refute the charges. So, what do you do with someone who cheated and made a mockery of baseball’s most sacred statistics? Give him a job, of course!

What I find most disgusting is that once you took the power numbers away, McGwire was a marginal hitter at best. In 16 seasons, he hit over .300 just three times and hit just .201 in 1991. He also has 300 more career strike outs than walks, which shows that he wasn’t the most selective of hitters. Also, keep in mind that these numbers would have been far worse if you take away a stretch in the late 1990′s where he was frequently walked intentionally. Of course, he was walked intentionally so often because of his power, which was the result of cheating.

You might say that Mark McGwire deserves to be a hitting coach based on his home run total (583), but this is a deceptive total. 193 of those home runs came between 1997 and 1999, when McGwire was at his (steroid) peak. Take away those three years, and Mark McGwire is nothing more than a glorified Dave Kingman. Of course, Dave Kingman didn’t need to cheat to hit over 400 home runs.

It’s ridiculous that Pete Rose was banned for life for betting on baseball games he had nothing to do with, yet Mark McGwire is welcomed back by Bud Selig. Mark McGwire compromised the integrity of every game he played in and the record books, and now he is being rewarded. What a great message to send to children.