I wrote everything I wanted to write about performance-enhancing drugs in July. Not many people read it then and I don’t imagine many will read it now.
But I wanted to get down a few thoughts about Mark McGwire and the summer of 1998 while the topic is fresh in everybody’s mind, and since that window is closing fast, here’s that:
I was 17 that summer and going into my senior year of high school. I had my own car for the first time. I taught music lessons to little kids for gas money, went to as many Mets games as I could, and spent a whole lot of nights sitting around with my buddies talking about Mark McGwire and watching the highlights of his home runs on SportsCenter.
For whatever reason, it seemed like everyone knew he was going to break the record from Opening Day. So there was an epic quality to every blast, a sense of grandeur. Some of that probably had to do with his sheer massiveness, of course, and all the flashbulbs popping and all that.
And it seemed like everyone knew he was on steroids, too. Just throwing that out there. At least me and my friends did, and I don’t know why some bunch of Long Island teenage goons would be privy to any inside information. We joked about it. Giant baseball players took steroids. We didn’t think it was a good thing or a bad thing, I guess, just a thing. But it certainly didn’t make all those home runs any less awesome.
And it doesn’t now, either. Not to me, at least.
Maybe no one else realized or something. Or maybe everyone did, and maybe some of the outpouring of sportswriter sanctimony these last few days has to do with a lingering sense of professional embarrassment over not have done more to stop it or expose it at the time.
I don’t know. And I don’t really care. If I’m not going to take any moral high ground against the baseball players who used the drugs, then I shouldn’t take it against anybody.
The truth is, that era — the so-called steroid era — was the time I came to understand and appreciate baseball in the thorough and passionate way I still do today, and that’s all wrapped up in home runs and McGwire and those conversations from the summer of 1998.
And I guess I just don’t like being told that my heroes are somehow less heroic than someone else’s heroes who came before. History’s box scores are littered with liars, cheaters, racists, addicts and drunks. The juicers of the last couple of decades merely add more bulk to the moral gray area the rest of us already occupied.
I never hoped McGwire was any sort of bastion of integrity. Heck, I can’t remember any of those conversations that summer having anything to do with his character. I guess I never even really wanted to know the terrifying truth, to paraphrase the Simpsons. I just wanted to see Mark McGwire smash some dingers.
And that he did. Many, many times that summer. Now some people are going to tell me they somehow don’t count, or his legacy is finally officially soiled, or his Hall of Fame chances are shot, and I’m stunned only by how little I care.
I don’t care. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. I vehemently don’t care. I thought maybe I did, but screw it. I have my memory, and I can still remember so many of those 70 home runs. And they were triumphant and awesome and spectacular and heroic. And also, some might say, impure. Whatever. I don’t care.
Tedquarters 
Right on Ted. Although, I do think that the way he’s handled this “apology” is a joke. I don’t care that he took steroids, I don’t care that he hit a f*ck ton of homers. But to still sit on his high horse and say that he won’t “sink to Jose Canseco’s level” is ridiculous.
It’s a crazy thing that an admission of guilt can be so self-absorbed and high-handed. Jose (AKA the Oracle) shoved a needle in your ass..admit it and lets go forward. This wishy/washy BS just perpetuates the horror that is Mike Lupica sports’ columns.
More than very interesting. WOW!
My son was 5 years old in 1998 and the McGwire/Sosa home run race was what turned him on to baseball and into a fanatical fan. I owe them.
“I don’t care. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. I vehemently don’t care. I thought maybe I did, but screw it. I have my memory, and I can still remember so many of those 70 home runs. And they were triumphant and awesome and spectacular and heroic. And also, some might say, impure. Whatever. I don’t care.”
I wish I had thought of your idea first.
In light of everything, that line from The Simpsons is brilliant as applied to the way we treated the home run craze of the late 90s.
DINGERS! DINGERS!
I have a hard time understanding how people who spend their entire lives enmeshed in the game of baseball (I’m thinking more about guys like Keith Law and Rob Neyer, who have expresse sentiments similar to Ted’s) could come out and say that they don’t care.
I was 12 at the time and though I liked the Mets I was way more caught up in watching Sportscenter every night and following the chase. In fact, I taped all of McGwire’s close-to-tying/tying/record-breaking games and spent no small amount of time deliberating on what to put on those sticky VHS labels.
My point is this–the “integrity of the game” is not a sportswriter-invented concept. It’s very real and without it the game is not much different than pro wrestling. Which is to say, something that can be fun to watch if you like it, but ultimately worth little in terms of witnessing a true competition. So my question is this then: if you don’t care, are you saying that your enjoyment of baseball is rooted in the fact that it’s just fun to watch and analyze? There would be nothing wrong with that, of course. But unfortunately, I came to love baseball because I thought that it was a real competition with a level playing field. It’s hard for me to accept that that’s not the case, and I’m wondering how people are doing that.
I guess the unfortunate thing is that the playing field, at the time, was level. The onus is on the league to police the players, and in the late 90s, the league was doing just about nothing to keep its players away from steroids. That’s terribly unfair to the guys who were unwilling to jeopardize their longterm health for fleeting success, but it’s much, much different from pro wrestling or even gambling scandals because everyone on the field is still trying his best to win.
The “I don’t care” above refers specifically to McGwires confession and the fallout. I suspect a lot of what fuels the general sense of apathy towards baseball’s steroid era, though, is that it’s a very very complicated thing and too many people are too quick to make it something that’s black and white.
In truth, it’s a sad thing really. On a whole lot of different levels.
Amen.
coming from long island i have to imagine you had a lot of friends who were also on steroids, based on my knowledge of predominant ethnic types found in that region and their depiction on reality television programs.
hey wouldnt it be funny of the MLBPA started demanding that the BBWAA started taking randomized drug tests with the penalty of thousands of dollars of fines and employment termination if they fail?
steroids were “good” for baseball and it is a “good” thing that theres tougher testing now but if the players union is fighting tooth and nail to make sure there is no testing and its the players bodies that are the ones getting harmed than who am i to say how they should police their profession? all the other reasons to care about steroids are just excuses to fill column inches in crappy newspapers and web pages.
and i think we should all applaud any new york met caught having done steroids for putting his own life safety on the line so our favorite team can win more games. THAT is serious dedication.
No one ever openly admitted steroid use, but there was one guy on my JV lacrosse team who got six unnecessary roughness penalties in the same game then got kicked out of interscholastic sports for punching an opposing player’s dad. To his credit, though, that kid’s dad seemed like a real jackass.
That was a great summer. I am the same age as you and was in the exact same boat. Fresh new drivers license, going into senior year. My friends and I did the same stuff. We’d hang out and wait for sportscenter to see who did what.
Everyone was wrapped up in that chase. I remember playing fall baseball games against Perth Amboy HS (mainly Hispanic area) that September and that all had “Sosa” and his number of hr’s painted on their back windshields. I remember when big mac crushed number 62, this girl I was sort of dating at the time called me all pumped, I didn’t know she even cared about baseball, but everyone seemed to then.
My friends and I knew he and Sosa were all roofed up and we didn’t care then and I really don’t care now. The sportswritters are hypocrites, killing big mac now, but didn’t seem to care as they ate that hr chase up just like we did.
I also remember how everyone was talking about how this might be the year, and asking McGwire whether he thinks he can break the record, similar to when Michael Jordan came back to the NBA that firs time, and the media had been discussing/asking whether the old record of 69 wins could be broken that season (and it was). It had the same feel about it, where people could sense that year could/would be unique. McGwire had hit 58 homers the year before, and now we were getting further expansion, and watering down of the pitching talent (pitching was God awful during that era- makes you realize how special guys like Pedro and Randy and Maddux were). I didn’t assume steroids were involved. I didn’t feel we had enough information, and given how hard we were told these guys worked out, at the time, given all the factors (expansion, watered down pitching, smaller ballparks), it seemed possible. However, when they kept doing it, I found it hard to buy. I couldn’t say it was steroids for sure, but I also wasn’t sure if it was just perfect storm of circumstances as I listed above. I wanted to believe it was genuine. And I enjoyed it while it was happening, but Sosa? Greg Vaughn? All those 50 homer seasons? Maybe I was naive though, cause I really thought McGwire was different than the other guys, meaning that I thought perhaps he was just the rght player at the right time. I grew up playing as the Oakland As on RBI Baseball for Nintendo, which had the 1987 stats, and I loved hitting as Big Mac and Canseco, especially McGwire. So, yeah, I thought it was possible for McGwire to have done what he did naturally at the time. Oh well.
Having said that, I personally wouldn’t vote him in the HOF. It’s not some high and mighty stance or anything. Not everyone is on one side or the other. Sure, plenty of people, including many writers, think no steroid users should get it. Then there’s the other side of it that says, let ’em all in. If they have the #s, so be it, let ’em in. I’m in the middle. I try to apply my own common sense. If someone was outed, and it seems obvious when he did it, given the clear spike in the player’s career, or he already told he when he did it, if I personally think that the steroids made the difference in putting a certain player over the top, then I’m inclined to vote no. For me, too much of McGwire’s HOF candidacy comes from that 5 year period. Before then, he was no way a HOF. In fact, he was in virtual baseball limbo. Then he goes onto have the greatest homerun stretch in the history of the game, I just can’t buy it. I can’t believe he hits 70 homers in ’98, or 65 the following year, or even 500 homers overall, without the benefit of steroids. Those numbers are both took extreme and too far from his previously established highs set earlier in his career, and it’s no coincidence that it all coincided with his steroid use. So, while I’ve always liked McGwire, and continue to do so, and I’m glad he’s back in the game, I don’t think he’s a HOF. Same for Sosa. Probably the same for Palmeiro, although that’s tougher and I’d have to look closer and give it some more thought before I come up with an answer. I absolutely believe Bonds is HOF though. He was still an all time great. I can apply my common sense and say that he probably started around 2001, and if he started before than, it probably wasn’t by much. And by that point in his career, he was already a HOF. As for Manny, I think as a whole, we are being hypocritical. We demand A-Rod tell us what he did, that he come clean. Same for McGwire. So why did Manny get off so easy in the court of public opinion? How long did he do steroids? I’d like to know more, but even still, I’d still lean towards yes for the HOF, because like Bonds, and A-Rod, he was such a great hitter almost from day 1. And he never put up Bugs Bunny type numbers. I know this is all subjective, but that’s the position I think the steroid users have put us in. I can’t see how it’s unfair to judge each player’s HOF candidacy on a case by case situation. And the HOF is partly subjective to begin with.
I think to argue that it was an era, so many people were doing it, so judge them all the same- I don’t like that argument. This is not specifically a moral issue for me (although that’s part of it), but once of enhanced performance. It’s as simple as that. The determination of a player’s career value is obviously not so simple. But I think some people are defending the choice to use steroids by so many players by attributing it to the era. I don’t buy that because I knew since I was a kid how bad steroids were for you, and that it was cheating. I’ve heard too many times in these past few years where people make it seem like nobody really knew what steroids were or what it did, and that I take issue with. Come on, we’re talking 15 or so years ago. It’s not that log ago. The players knew they were doing something illegal. They still made the choice. I only ask that they don’t blame it on the era, and take respnsibility- same for some fans and some media members who make those same arguments, that it was the era. Please. I personally don’t care anymore other than I take issue with certain logic, or when it’s time to vote on someone’s candidacy. But overall, I’m probably like most fans who just want to move forward (despite what the length of this post might dictate :) ).