“I don’t believe what I just saw.”
Those seven words provided one of the most wonderful sports broadcast calls of all time by one of the most wonderful sports broadcasters ever to etch the souls of untold millions.
The late Jack Buck had perfectly described one of baseball’s singular achievements, the day in 1988 that a hobbled Kirk Gibson lived every little boy’s dream by stepping up to the plate and winning Game 1 of the World Series with a dramatic, two-run, two-out, 3–2 pitch, walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth at Dodger Stadium.
Gibson had fought off injuries in both legs to write his name into America’s storybooks forever. It was fitting that one of America’s great storytellers was there to chronicle the moment.
It was also fitting, in retrospect, that the first baseman on the field as Gibson limped around the bases that day was a young, behemoth first baseman named Mark McGwire, playing for the Oakland Athletics. And that the home run sailed over the head of a young, behemoth right fielder named Jose Canseco, whose grand-slam homer in the first provided all the runs his team would score that day.
And that the manager watching from the opposing team’s dugout was a young wizard named Tony La Russa.
It’s fitting because the three will inextricably be linked with baseball’s steroids era. And with all respect to Buck, a friend and admirer of McGwire and La Russa, the great broadcast call should be the motto of this era:
You don’t believe what you just saw.
In this sense, the Mark McGwire story transcends sport, because it touches upon larger issues of credibility and community. St. Louis still has a 5-mile stretch of highway named for this person—absurdly—and the Cardinals are civic fabric as much as sports franchise.
For those living in a cave, either McGwire achieved his greatness with the assistance of illegal steroids, or he deserves an Oscar for portraying someone who did. Setting aside the obvious explosion of his body over the years with 60 or so added pounds of muscle—among other telltale signs of a steroid user—McGwire infamously refused under oath at a 2005 congressional hearing to answer a simple yes-or-no question as to whether he had taken steroids.
His “I’m not here to talk about the past” response might have been the envy of anyone who had ever been in trouble for anything, had it succeeded in convincing a soul of his innocence. It did not.
And while plenty of reality-deniers in St. Louis sadly hang onto the mirage that was McGwire as a hero, the spectacle begged the simplest of questions: How hard might it have been for someone who had never used steroids to state—under oath—that he had never used steroids?
Canseco appears to be the ultimate truth-teller on the subject, and his two books—Juiced in 2005 and Vindicated in 2008—have named lots of names. The loudest deniers of his charges, men like Rafael Palmeiro and Alex Rodriguez, have subsequently had to place tails between legs and confess to Canseco’s accusations that they used steroids.
There have been no reports of libel or slander actions against Canseco.
In both books, Canseco speaks repeatedly of having injected McGwire with steroids. Earlier this year, McGwire’s own brother Jay said he, too, injected the slugger.
Enough said.
McGwire’s best defense is that all of this shouldn’t matter. He certainly wasn’t the only one trying to gain an extra advantage in the sport, and steroids weren’t even against the rules if and when he did them.
Besides, what’s the big deal anyway? This is just baseball, nothing weightier. McGwire didn’t shoot someone or have a fatal DWI or steal something. He’s a fine family man with a charitable foundation. Leave him alone.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it doesn’t address the ultimate conclusion that so many of us came to in 1998 and that a shocking number of people still believe today: that Mark McGwire is a hero for doing something special.
He was not. He is not.
McGwire and fellow “apparent” steroid-user Sammy Sosa were literally worshipped for “achievements” in 1998 that were almost certainly fraudulent. Here’s what appears to be their real achievement: They injected chemical substances that gave them the extra strength to turn long fly-ball outs into home runs.
In the process, they were credited with having saved baseball by energizing millions of fans—this one included—with an epic and historic chase of home-run records that (like it or not, non–sports fans) were part of the fabric of American culture. They received tens of millions of dollars and, more important, the adulation of many more millions of men, women, and children for doing something they did not do.
They did not perform a great feat. Chemistry did.
They lived a lie, and millions bought the lie. That would legitimize the steroid issue as the subject of ongoing inquiry even had La Russa not announced in late October that he was bringing in McGwire as the Cardinals’ new batting coach.
The coaching thing is baseball stuff, and as much as I’d love gratuitously to unleash the sportswriter in me, this isn’t the place. (Although I can’t resist noting that for the two years of McGwire’s superproduction of 135 home runs, 1998–99, the Cardinals were seven games under .500 and didn’t finish closer than 19 games out of first place.)
Whether McGwire should be viewed as a good selection as a coach has nothing to do with his tainted past. And it really won’t change things if he decides to “come clean.”
A more important point is that most non–sports fans would never have heard McGwire’s name were it not for the chemically aided home-run chase of 1998. And to sports fans, a non-abetted McGwire would have likely been remembered like Dave Kingman, a giant slugger with a so-so average who hit a lot of home runs but wasn’t Hall of Fame material by a long shot.
Don’t forget this was a big deal in the final years of the 20th century, featured on the covers of national magazines and leading the news—not just sports coverage—and thus becoming the stuff of national lore. A decade later, issues remain.
For La Russa, team owners like the Cardinals’ Bill DeWitt Jr., and baseball’s sad-sack commissioner Bud Selig, there are still the unanswered (and largely unasked) questions of what-did-you-know and when-did-you-know-it. If baseball knowingly allowed a fraud to be perpetrated for business reasons, that’s at least worth knowing. If the media looked away, that’s at least worth knowing.
If we were all conned—if we shouldn’t have believed what we just saw—then that’s at least worth knowing for future reference.
Even today, the average person underestimates what went into the steroid scandal. As Canseco documents at great length in Juiced, there’s a lot of science involved in achieving the perfect regimen of injections and workouts to make steroids truly effective.
This isn’t Popeye swallowing spinach. It’s a matter of having the right cycle of the right drugs and the right workout program. (It’s always humorous to hear defenders of the likes of McGwire protest that their guy couldn’t be a user because he was always a madman in the weight room. Indeed, weight-room fanaticism is an essential part of the steroid program and hardly something that disproves its use.)
There’s also much that is surreptitious about acquiring (illegally) the drugs and disposing (discreetly) of the syringes. This was serious business for the athletes who benefited from their use.
Conversely, it ought to be a serious concern for those who were fooled by the same.
I remember distinctly being offended on McGwire’s behalf that some sportswriter would have invaded his privacy in 1998 by noting a bottle of androstenedione (known as andro). That started much furor during the great home-run chase, with the Cardinals’ medical staff leading the angry response that calmed the storm.
In retrospect, Canseco’s Juiced seems to offer the perfect explanation for this, which is that McGwire was a smart guy who intentionally left andro in plain view for the sportswriter to seize upon. Why? For one thing, Canseco claims baseball insiders were onto the steroid use, so it was only a matter of time until it came out. If it did, a perfectly legal, over-the-counter substance like andro would offer a believable explanation should McGwire be questioned—or for that matter, tested—regarding steroids.
Canseco says andro’s minor impact would have lasted maybe an hour, while steroids stay in your system for six to eight months at a time.
“McGwire using andro would have been like a hospital patient on morphine asking for an aspirin,” Canseco wrote. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
And neither did I, back in 1998, waxing eloquent on television about how Mark McGwire was the victim of an invasion of privacy and false innuendo.
I shouldn’t have believed what I just saw.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
