BBWAA: Mark McGwire died for your sins

It's going to be hilarious and disgusting at the same time when Clemens gets 94 percent of the vote in six years, and he gets a total stroke job from writers who continue to bury their head in the sand and say, "He's a pitcher! Pitcher's don't take steroids! I see no correlation at all when people point out that McGwire, Bonds and Clemens all put on tons of muscle and all had late-career spikes in performance! He's simply one of the best right-handers of all time! Tra-la-lee, tra-la-la!"

 

in real life, when i'm talking to non-reporters who have never been reporters, i defend the media. but on here the spectrum is skewed so my views come across as critical of the baseball writing establishment.

that said, i was roundly ripped for this on a thread a few weeks ago but it seems to me that more columnists could have at least raised questions during the 1998 to 2003, '04 mcguire to bonds transition. a talented columnist (not me though) could have raise speculation by presenting the following: pictures of bonds over the years, previously unheard of power numbers, the slowly leaking BALCO stuff, caminiti's death and canseco's book.

all those amounted to proving nothing. nada. zilch. i get it. but combined, these factors raised an awful lot of questions that the writing establishment chose to gloss over.

 

Don't need no proof -- only conjecture.

 

I have a friend who was in a baseball capacity and he said Clemens is one of the biggest juicers there is. But he'd never, ever go on the record about it.

 

Come, my children!

 

When it comes to Bonds why isn't the cream & clear and flax seed oil story mentioned more prominently?
Bonds took steroids. He just says he didn't know what they were. He's very naive and trusting. The Forrest Gump or Rain Man of baseball.

 

One crazy aspect of this is that some players magically get painted as completely clean and innocent. One guy I talked to said Paul O'Neill and Saberhagen deserved more votes than McGwire becuase at least we "know" they were clean. We know nothing of the sort, and such blinders are almost as annoying as accusing people without proof.

 

I don't know what you read, or if you even can read, abbott, but the fact that Bonds, in leaked grand jury testimony, claimed never to have knowingly taken steroids has been written thousands of times.
His flaxseed oil excuse has been written thousands of times.

Do you have the slightest clue what you're taking about, oh, great investigate reporter?

 

I agree that it would have been impossible for baseball beat writers to do their jobs while trying to meet with sources in darkened garages and ferret out a story on players taking illegal performance enhancing drugs.

But ... with the breathless way the home run chases were covered and the obvious questions about drug use, papers should have put other people on it.

We just weren't willing to do that.

 

I've mentioned this when this topic has come up previously, but there were baseball writers asking questions at the time - and amazingly enough, players lied. I specifically discussed steroids at length with two players I covered who were often thought to be steroid users, and both expressed horror at the thought that anyone could use performance enhancing substances. Both were later linked to BALCO.
Being a reporter doesn't give you miraculous powers to uncover the truth if people are hiding it. We can't search lockers. We can't examine medical records. I've had e-mailers tell me I should have been following players home and checking their garbage, or hanging out at their gyms talking to shady regulars who might be supplying them with steroids. Maybe that would have worked, but I think that sounds more like a private detective than a baseball beat writer.

 

I'm not sure if you're acknowledging this as being right AND the way it should be ... or as it being right AND an ugly truth about this situation.

So I'll connect the dots. This is correct ... AND this is wrong.

"Mark McGwire manipulated his body. I have no proof; I just know it. I don't think that's right. So I'm going to take it upon myself to punish him."

Going completely beyond the hypocrisy of the home-run chase reportage, this is WRONG.

 

I agree a baseball beat writer shouldn't be shadowing players or scoping out the gym, but if we had a good idea that we were being duped, papers should have put somebody on that assignment.