Mark McGwire is a national disgrace

I wasn’t happy when I heard that Mark McGwire was becoming the St. Louis Cardinal’s hitting coach. For years, fans had suspected that McGwire had used steroids. When he testified before Congress a few years ago, he did nothing to counter these suspicions and seemed like someone who was guilty. Now, 11 years after breaking baseball’s single season home run record, Mark McGwire has admitted what many had suspected: He used steroids.

Mark McGwire’s apology seems sincere, but to me, it’s meaningless. His cheating and drug use has made a mockery of the game in general, and its records and history in particular. Him and other suspected and confirmed steroid users such as Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Andy Pettite, Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens, Ken Caminiti, and Alex Rodriguez have devalued the game and its history. The beauty of baseball was the constant comparisons of teams and players from differing eras. With a generation of baseball sullied by cheaters and drug users, those comparisons are largely null and void.

The only easy thing is how I will explain this to my children one day. I will tell them about a man named Roger Maris who holds the single season home run record, and another man named Hank Aaron, who is the all-time career home run leader. He or she might point to the record books and tell me that I’m wrong, that other people broke their records, and I’ll have to explain what happened. I’ll need to explain how a group of greedy men cheated and dishonored baseball’s past, while Roger Maris and Hank Aaron used nothing but hard work and determination.