The end was anticlimactic.
Mark McGwire—you remember him, the big guy with the Popeye arms who swung a baseball bat rather successfully—was lifted for a pinch hitter when the Cardinals needed him most: The 2001 division playoffs, against the Arizona Diamondbacks. The fifth and deciding game. Top of the ninth, Jim Edmonds on first, with the score tied 1-1. One minute McGwire’s in the on-deck circle, the next he’s being called back to the dugout so pinch hitter Kerry Robinson can bunt Edmonds into scoring position.
Kerry Robinson? Sure, he had a bum knee and all, but Kerry Robinson? I was working in the newsroom of the Sporting News that night, and fellow moonlighter Tom Klein, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, astutely noted, “Wouldn’t that be sad if that’s the end of his career?”
Sure enough, it was. Robinson struck out, and the Diamondbacks’ Tony Womack sent the Cardinals home with a game-winning hit in the bottom of the ninth. Less than one month later, McGwire would fax his retirement announcement to ESPN so it could be announced on a Sunday in time for the 11 p.m. SportsCenter.
Just like that, McGwire mania was over. No fireworks. No fanfare. Just a slow fade into an October night, a far cry from the nights three years earlier when Big Mac captured our imagination, made us proud he was one of us. Habitually he made Busch Stadium sparkle with the lights of a thousand cameras after hitting home runs that would reduce burly men to tears.
Now I wonder ... was the ending perhaps appropriate after all? Five years have come and gone, and since that time the lens through which we viewed Mark McGwire has been blurred: Allegations of steroids. Tell-all books. Clouds of suspicion. Doubt heaped upon uneasiness. And the clincher: that cringe-inducing after-noon of March 17, 2005, when McGwire, appearing before Congress and asked point-blank about his own steroid use, could say only, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”
So why are we talking about the past now? This month, voting members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America will be mailed ballots and asked for the first time to consider whether McGwire is worthy of baseball’s highest honor: induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, N.Y.
In St. Louis, several journalists have been members of the BBWAA for 10 or more years and have Hall of Fame voting privileges. Post-Dispatch writers Rick Hummel and Bernie Miklasz are voters, as is sports editor Joe Ostermeier of the Belleville News-Democrat and a handful of editors or former editors from the Sporting News, including myself. Each December, voters receive paper ballots with the names of eligible candidates and may vote for one player, two players or as many as 10 players. According to the rules, any player receiving votes on 75 percent of the ballots cast is in. A player must receive votes on at least 5 percent of the ballots to stay on the ballot for the next year.
So does McGwire have a shot?
Not a chance, says Sporting News assistant managing editor Carl Moritz, a voter since 2000: “That whole era skewed a number of records that will forever be tainted. One of the great things about baseball has always been that you could compare players from different eras because they all played by the same rules and you could trust their numbers. You can’t do that anymore. Now a whole era is suspect because of the cloud of suspicion of steroids. I’m not voting for him this time. I don’t think I’ll ever vote for him.”
One of Moritz’s colleagues, senior editor Joe Hoppel, who has been voting since 1992, agrees: “To me, as long as there is any doubt—and the doubt has been raised by his testimony before Congress—I will not be voting for him. But if that doubt’s ever erased, then I could. For now, though, there’s a cloud there. [Rafael] Palmeiro, [Sammy] Sosa, [Barry] Bonds, there’s a cloud there.”
Hummel, a venerable sportswriter who has covered the Cardinals since 1973, isn’t voting for McGwire, either, and predicts he won’t make it in this year. “I don’t think it has all to do with the steroids issue,” he says. “He’s not the same caliber candidate as Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripken [also eligible for the first time]. There are a number of writers who, when confronted with a situation where you have two outstanding players like that, may only vote for two guys and not vote for anyone else. McGwire is a strong candidate, but not nearly as strong as those two, and I think that will hurt him.”
Hummel says the 2007 election will be a better barometer of voters’ feelings on the steroids issue: “That’s a year from now, which is a long time, and he may come out and have something to say about it all, which is unlikely. But if there’s not a strong candidate in front of him next year, that will get interesting.”
In the meantime, there’ll be plenty of talking about the past this month as voters mull over their ballots. As for me, I consider the privilege of voting for baseball’s Hall of Fame a sacred honor. The memory of that congressional hearing still stings in my mind; he’s not getting my vote this year.
One day, perhaps McGwire will level with the public that once adored him. Tell us his story. Be as genuine as he was the day he announced his signing with the Cardinals and pledged money for abused children. If he does, I think the voters—and the fans—will be forgiving. But until then, he’s not likely to get in. Not this year. Maybe not next year. Maybe not ever.
Ink It In
Before you cancel those travel plans to Cooperstown next July, hold on: St. Louis has a viable, legitimate shot at being represented at the 2007 induction ceremony. The Post-Dispatch’s Rick Hummel is one of three finalists for the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, awarded annually to a baseball writer who has made a lifetime contribution to the game.
The award, named after the founder and first editor of the Sporting News, has been singling out writers since 1962, including Shirley Povich, Ring Lardner and our own Bob Broeg. Hummel’s competition? Nick Peters, of the Sacramento Bee, and Mo Siegel, of the Washington Post.
If you ask me, Hummel—a native of Quincy, Ill.—deserves the award. He’s truly one of the good guys working up in the press box.
“It’s a little daunting,” he says of the nomination. “I guess it tells you if nothing else that maybe you were doing it right, that the work you’ve done in your career was right in the eyes of a lot of people. [Laughs.] How many people, I don’t know.”
