RealGM

Well Mark has decided this is the time to come clean. I wonder how the former grand jury investigation feels about his new found candor...

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4816607

lol @ thread title.

p.s. McGwire

I think it's too late for him...not really sure why he is doing this now..

MGD24 wrote:I think it's too late for him...not really sure why he is doing this now..

I guess because he saw his 23% vote and figures if he admits it he can get in the HOF...in 10 years, when he will be magically and suddenly be good enough to enter. You know, since his 2009-2019 stats will be off the charts.

I'm shocked... lol.

Really should have admitted it long ago, and I share the "shock".

lol @ the title.

too late for him though.

Hoopstarr wrote:

MGD24 wrote:I think it's too late for him...not really sure why he is doing this now..

I guess because he saw his 23% vote and figures if he admits it he can get in the HOF...in 10 years, when he will be magically and suddenly be good enough to enter. You know, since his 2009-2019 stats will be off the charts.

Ding ding ding!

I honestly dont think he did it for the HOF. Its because he is going to be back in the game with the Cards and he knew if he didnt speak about it now, he would get asked every single day during the season until he came clean.

Hoopstarr wrote:

MGD24 wrote:I think it's too late for him...not really sure why he is doing this now..

I guess because he saw his 23% vote and figures if he admits it he can get in the HOF...in 10 years, when he will be magically and suddenly be good enough to enter. You know, since his 2009-2019 stats will be off the charts.

Yup I agree. Already I have seen blogs and articles saying that he should be forgiven and the whole thing should be forgotten.

Felt like vomiting when i saw that "heartfelt" interview, he needs to get some real acting lessons

I forgive the big guy.
When my Expos were robbed of their World Series in 1994, I stopped watching baseball and then got into this crazy new fangled thing in Canada called the NBA.

Regardless of if many want to admit it or not, the Big Mac, Sosa, Griffey chase of Maris was exciting and unlike far to many of the athletes of today McGwire was not a total dink.

It was that chase that actually made me tune in every now and then, and as a result of that I slowly returned to the game of baseball like millions of others.

So he juiced? Yeah its terrible, its a bad message to the kids, yadda yadda.

You know what he didn't do?

Point a gun at his team mate in the locker room, murder his girlfriend, fire a handgun into the air outside a strip club, run into the stands and strike a fan, get pulled over going 92MPH in a 30 zone with two loaded unregistered handguns under the front seat of his car smoking a j.

Steroids were not banned by baseball when he used them, he pleaded the fifth in front of the government panel, and therefore never lied about using them but rather never admitted he did.

He could have been a dickbag like Barry Bonds and simply buried himself away from the limelight but he opted to come clean so he could return to a game he loves.

Regardless of our opinion of the quality of the apology it takes a big man to admit what he did, regardless of if we knew or not.

^Yep. I don't really like the guy, but what I hate even more is the hypocrisy of these moralizing Old White Men making the HOF about character and purity. Ty Cobb is in the HOF, is he not? That alone should demolish any and all reasoning they have for keeping roiders out. It's flatly dishonest and delusional to say that cheating and performance enhancement weren't part of the game from the very beginning. Why exclude it just to PEDs? Why not Gaylord Perry doctoring balls? What about using high-tech equipment, hiring personal trainers, etc.? There is no end to the slippery slope when you support such a flawed principle.

I'll link to two Bill Simmons articles that knock this whole issue out of the park.

1. Simmons proposes a pyramid style HOF: http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/020108.html
2. Simmons defends McGwire against sanctimonious ****: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/st ... ons/070103

I agree that McGwire should end up in the Hall when all is said and done...but I have no problem with the BBWAA leaving he and the other known PED users to twist in the wind for a few years.

Please tolerate a sanctimonious question or 2...

Should Ben Johsnon have kept his gold medal from Seoul?

Should the East German women's swim team be honoured for their achievements during the Cold War era?

Should NASCAR rule violators retain their Sprint Cup points?

Was playing Danny Almonte in the Little League World Series justifiable because they won?

Should the ump have handed Joe Niekro his emory board back? Besides, his knuckler was really dancing that night!

Should an acknowleged steroid user - injections, pills, you name it - be feted at Cooperstown because he was able to hit homeruns?


How does hitting more tainted homeruns make it easier to tolerate?

I hope he never makes it in. Canseco should get in just for coming clean first. And I don't think a token "hitting coach" job for the Cards was his reason for coming out. It's all about the HOF. Being a hitting coach and coming clean are all about him trying to show a better side to himself, to get into the hall. Loser.

He felt so bad about lying all these years he needed to hire a big shot spin doctor to help him with his interviews. I don't care whether he gets in the hall or not and i don't really have a side on the whole PED thing but you're either sorry about what you did or you're not, if you actually are sorry i don't know why he had to make a mockery of this whole thing?

SharoneWright wrote:Please tolerate a sanctimonious question or 2...

Should Ben Johsnon have kept his gold medal from Seoul?

Should the East German women's swim team be honoured for their achievements during the Cold War era?

Should NASCAR rule violators retain their Sprint Cup points?

Was playing Danny Almonte in the Little League World Series justifiable because they won?

Should the ump have handed Joe Niekro his emory board back? Besides, his knuckler was really dancing that night!

Should an acknowleged steroid user - injections, pills, you name it - be feted at Cooperstown because he was able to hit homeruns?


How does hitting more tainted homeruns make it easier to tolerate?

All legit questions, but it depends on what you think the role of the HOF is. Like Simmons, I think of it as a museum of baseball history, and that's really the only rational and fair way to think of it. Obviously when Cobb and others were inducted, the HOF was considered a museum first and foremost or they wouldn't be in. For some reason, as the voters have aged, it has now become the Hall of Likable and Ethical Baseball Players. Why not just put in the roiders and put all of their glory AND failures on display? Who would be opposed to this? No other museum of history has these lame, shallow standards. You don't see dinosaur museums excluding T-Rex because they ate little baby raptors or the Smithsonian wiping out any mention of say, Sally Hemings, because it would besmirch Thomas Jefferson.

Whether or not baseball had rules against it, steroids give players an unfair advantage. Maybe Big Mac was a great homerun hitter, but he himself says he took the roids to come back from injury. So we can assume he wouldn't have come back as strong from his injuries and would not have hit all those homeruns. And the only reason he's considered for the hall is because of his homeruns. I think this is very different than people who did wrong things outside of the game.

^

A reasonable arguement as your 'museum' is based on actual events that occurred infront of millions of witnesses. For me though, I view the Hall as an "achievement" based set rather than an "historical" based set - a salute to greatness, not a catalogue of history. If you allow cheaters in, and you automatically change the standards of what constitutes greatness. Forget the "moral" arguement for a second... It becomes a real practical issue of which stats now make the grade. I just don't think its possible to compare apples to oranges like that. With the bell-curve skewed, the achievements of those who competed honestly are necessarily diminished. The Hall would resemble more of a science experiement, documenting what can be manufactured by science rather than honouring the limits of human achievement. Depends what you want I guess....

Though I think McGwire is a douche for doing what he did, I tend to lean towards the side that says he should be in the hall. That being said, steroids not being illegal in MLB is the weakest ass excuse that I have ever heard. Who cares that they weren't illegal in MLB when most of them were illegal under US law at the time. Takes precedence way over MLB rules in my mind.

Also, Canseco apparently has just come out and said Big Mac (which is an awesomely appropriate name for a 'roider) is still lying. This is looking more and more like a John Edwards apology.