Jay Marriotti: Home-run Heroes Come Off as Zeros

Home-run heroes come off as zeros before Congress
March 18, 2005
BY JAY MARIOTTI
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

The man who once flaunted the biggest muscles in baseball, Mark McGwire, is now the smallest coward in Washington. Sammy Sosa, who contrived a b.s. story when his bat was corked, still comes off as a smiling sneak with "nothing to say'' because he's hiding behind a language barrier that doesn't exist.

And to think I wasted brain cells glorifying their home runs, their charm, their place in American lore. Shame on me for believing it, shame on baseball for selling it, shame on McGwire for playing the hero and then hiding behind the Fifth Amendment when under oath Thursday and facing the masses who adored him.

"I'm not here to discuss the past,'' he said, fighting back tears all afternoon. "I'm here to be positive, not negative.''

Big Fib, we'll call him. Never mind that McGwire was the one who turned a positive into a negative like no so-called sports icon of recent time. He's the positive one, the rest of us are negative nabobs. All I can say is, when his name appears on my Hall of Fame ballot in two years, I will not vote for him any more than I would for Pete Rose. As for Sosa, I'd love to believe his proclaimed innocence before the House Government Reform Committee -- "To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs,'' he said -- if an attorney hadn't read the statement for him and Sammy didn't repeatedly mumble, stare at the tabletop and either issue non-answers to important questions or agree with whatever Rafael Palmeiro or Curt Schilling said before him.

"I don't have much to tell you,'' said Sosa, mannequin-like.

Hearing all of this crud, I concur with Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), a Hall of Famer who talked tough about baseball's crooked era. "If they started in 1992 or 1993 illegally using steroids, wipe all of their records out,'' Bunning said. "Take them away. They don't deserve them. Go ask Henry Aaron. Go ask the family of Roger Maris. Go ask all of the people that played without enhanced drugs if they would like their records compared with the current records.''

On the day when a flim-flam pastime was exposed as institutionally dishonest and chemically scummy, the day when kids of all ages realized they can't trust athletes as role models, a supposed benchmark year in our land's sacred sports history -- 1998 -- officially died. May we purge all those memories from our minds, like a lemon car or a cheating girlfriend, and pretend they never happened. Starting in midmorning and continuing long past dinner, the committee plowed through a trail of deceit and mismanagement in baseball's steroids crisis. Much of it surrounded the blindness of commissioner Bud Selig, who testified he knew little about steroids until waking up seven years ago and reading that androstenedione was found in McGwire's locker -- even though Selig was quoted in published stories about steroids as early as 1993. But we already knew Bud Light was a sham.

McGwire's reticence regrettable

McGwire's performance was utterly disgraceful. I've never felt more embarrassed for an athlete in a character-defining scene. Once called "a true American hero'' by then-President Clinton, Big Fib announced in his opening statement that he wouldn't discuss steroids directly and, true to his vow, refused to answer the committee's most probing questions. He would have been better off going incognito and relocating to Mexico, especially after the anguished statements of Donald Hooton, he of the famous baseball Hootons, who believes that his 17-year-old son, Taylor, hanged himself two years ago because of the psychological effects of steroid use.

"Players that are guilty of taking steroids are not only cheaters -- you are cowards,'' Hooton said in a charged voice. "You hide behind the skirts of your union, and with the help of management and your lawyers, you've made every effort to resist facing the public today.''

Minutes later, McGwire walked right into Hooton's description. Voice shaking, words quivering, he took a long gulp of water and said, "If a player answers, 'No,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers, 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations. My lawyers have advised me that I can't answer these questions without jeopardizing my family, my friends or myself.'' Public scorn? Last I looked, America was forgiving to those who fess up. What is wrong with government probes when Congress, as stated often, is making sure kids don't risk their lives using steroids because their heroes are using steroids? In one breath, Big Fib acknowledged there's "a problem with steroid use in baseball.'' But he added, "What I will not do is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates.'' So he played with people who used steroids. There's a start.

But when the committee wanted to know more, McGwire clammed up. Should baseball have a zero-tolerance policy?

"I don't know. I'm a retired player,'' he said.

Does he consider steroid use to be cheating?

"That's not for me to determine,'' he said.

'Positive' spin backfires

Finally, after another "I'm here to be positive'' answer, Rep. Elijah Cummings laid into him. "I'm trying to be positive here, too,'' he challenged McGwire. "It's one thing for you to say you want to help, but it's a whole other thing when the parents [of Tyler Hooton] are sitting directly behind you, wondering if it's real.'' McGwire vowed to "redirect'' the aim of his foundation to steroids.
The committee wasn't impressed.

"Theater of the absurd,'' Rep. Tom Lantos said.

"If Enron people come in here and say, 'We don't want to talk about the past,' do you think Congress is going to let them get away with that?'' Rep. Mark Souder scolded. "If we don't talk about the past, how in the world are we supposed to pass legislation when you are a protected monopoly?''

But then, McGwire was following orders. So was Sosa, who opened the day by staring at an attorney who read the slugger's words: "Everything I have heard about steroids and human growth hormones is that they are very bad for you, even lethal. I would never put anything dangerous like that in my body.

"I am clean.''

So why am I off to take a long, hot, extra-strength-detergent bath?

Jay Mariotti is a regular on ''Around the Horn'' at 4 p.m. on ESPN. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com with name, hometown and daytime phone number (letters run Sunday).