Mark McGwire used steroids and is now coaching St. Louis Cardinal hitters. Bryan Burwell has a problem with this; he's just not that sure what this is.
His words are in bold. Mine are upset with his words in bold.
What a mess with McGwire
By sports columnist Bryan Burwell
01/19/2010
We have seen this all before, but that doesn't make it any more palatable to digest.
Okay, right off the bat I have a problem with this column. The more you see something, the more palatable it is to digest. The first time I screwed a chick while she was on the rag, it wasn't very palatable. By the fifth time: no big deal at all. That's how life works: exposure yields palatability. I hate it when the first sentence in a column upsets me.
We saw it several years ago in San Francisco when the surly sycophants jeered anyone who had the audacity to say something bad about their beloved anti-hero Barry Bonds. We saw it again last summer in Southern California, when giddy and oblivious Dodgers fans treated Manny Ramirez like he was a funky rock star rather than the goofy drug cheat that he really was.
I don't think the Dodger fans were oblivious. In fact, I'm pretty sure they live in the drug-using, performance-enhancing, fake-body-part capital of the world and as such they just didn't give a damn. Keep in mind, their Governor used steroids, Bryan. The dude running the state. They voted for him. It's safe to say they could give two craps what their ballplayers ingest.
We witnessed the Mannyworld Traveling Circus and Rehab Tour up close and personal, and it was both disturbing and wildly amusing; it was a crazy, mixed-up carnival of the most absurd baseball worshipers you ever did see, every last one of them gathering to profess their unwavering support of a man who had just spent a big chunk of the baseball season on a 50-game suspension.
Wow. It's like fan is short for fanatic or something…
"We're fans," one man told me at the time. "This is what fans do. I hated Barry Bonds. I booed him all the time, too. And here I am cheering for Manny. Crazy, huh?"
I root for the guys who play on my favorite team and boo the guys who don't. This makes me different than absolutely no baseball fans in the history of history.
"Crazy" just begins to properly describe it.
I think "typical" actually begins to properly describe it.
And now we're seeing the embarrassing nonsense once again, but this time it's in St. Louis, where legions of Cardinals loyalists suffering from that same strain of incurable fanaticism greeted Mark McGwire – the face of baseball's steroid era – with a rousing, standing ovation in his first public appearance here since admitting he used a potent array of performance-enhancing drugs while becoming a celebrated home run king.
Okay, deep breath followed by light yoga stretching and the ingestion of an Ambien. Alright, Bryan Burwell, you don't get to declare McGwire the face of baseball's steroid era. Better ballplayers were actually caught using this stuff and a really crappy ballplayer wrote two books on it. You are not the one who decides who is the face of what but if you were, you'd be bad at the job. Because you're wrong. And anyway, what were fans supposed to do? Boo the guy who helped save their favorite sport and (not so incidentally) your freaking salary? That would be… um… really mean. McGwire made his mistake, admitted it and now we can all move on.
On Sunday afternoon in the Hyatt Regency ballroom, 2,500 fans took their turn to join the parade of baseball fans willing to celebrate a confirmed baseball cheat, and they did it with a thunderous roar that nearly brought tears to McGwire's eyes.
Those sons of bitches!
Of course, the story can't be complete without the cheering masses. Gullible and easily satisfied, all they care about is that they are provided with a rose-colored prism to view their heroes. What this select group of Cardinals fans are saying is that they are no different from the Giants-Barry Bonds fans and the Dodgers-Manny Ramirez fans.
I think they're saying that they forgive McGwire and they appreciate what he did for the town but I could be wrong. Either way though, the fans in St. Louis really aren't all that different from fans all over the country when it comes to loving their super stars. (Side note: I would love to see what this column would have been like if one of the 2500 fans at the Winter Warm Up threw a battery at McGwire and called him a "Big ginger cheat machine." I bet this column would not have heaped praise on the anti-fan. I could be wrong. But I'm not. )
They truly don't care that their fallen stars have been busted for drugs and continue to give them halfhearted apologies and bogus alibis. So the red-clad loyalists crowded into that ballroom Sunday with one purpose in mind – to profess their undying allegiance to their prodigal son. They cheered the guy who cheated and booed Jack Clark, the man who didn't cheat and had the guts to criticize McGwire for his drug-fueled accomplishments.
Jack Clark had the "guts" to criticize McGwire on a radio show that makes Clark money. Jack Clark is, was and will always be an asshole. He is also one of many former players unhappy with the fact that their numbers look really puny next to a lot of the steroid users. I say he has a legitimate gripe but so what? I've had tons of legitimate gripes in my day and never once did I have to ostracize a colleague on the radio. Of course, I am a little different than most fifty-something ex baseball players.
These are the people who will provide McGwire, the Cardinals and Commissioner Bud Selig all the cover they think they need to continue getting away with the scam they are trying to perpetrate.
Ooh… what scam?
The scam, of course, is that everything is just fine in baseball.
No one uses absolutes anymore, Bryan. Everything is not "just fine" within anything shy of my mother's key lime tarts, which are delicious.
"I hope you can all accept this," McGwire said with a nervous grin. "Let's all move on from this. Baseball is great right now. Baseball is better. Let's just all move on."
Nothing to look at here, people. Just move along, please just move along.
Most of us moved along years ago, Bryan. Heck, I had already moved on back in 1998 when you were writing columns stating how great McGwire was for baseball. You're late to the chastising, Burwell.
So here's how Wag the McGwire works. They are counting on you to be as gullible and fatigued as this small sampling of Cardinals fanatics proved to be. They are hoping that you will be just like the folks in LA and the folks in San Francisco and the folks in New York who have already participated in the scam so successfully.
Again, what are the fans supposed to do? Pelt him with rocks? Rape his wife? What's the appropriate amount of rage for something that happened years ago and is of little importance in the grand scheme of things?
They give you a little snippet of the truth, an ambiguous alibi that never quite tells the full story, and they are counting on that being more than enough for you.
I don't want to know the horrible truth. I just want to see some dingers.
Ding-dong, the steroid era is dead.
No. It's not dead. But it is being heavily regulated. The first offense for violation is a fifty game suspension. That's no soft cheese, Mr. Burwell. Baseball is doing what little it can.
That may work for some of you, and I understand that. But that does not work so well with the other characters in this show whom the spin doctors are having a devil of a time manipulating fully. Reporters don't move on simply because they have been told to move on. It's not our job to move on. It's our job to dig in and keep probing until we get the entire truth.
Yeah, and it was your job in 1998 back when this was a story. Now, apparently, it's your job to whine like a little punk about twelve year old news. Journalism rules!
And just so you know, there still are plenty of questions that need to be asked and answered. Important questions that must be addressed now that the Cardinals have put one of the biggest steroid cheats in baseball history – one of the scandal's original sinners – right back in the clubhouse and put him in charge of nurturing all their hitters.
Okay… so ask one of these questions. That's your job you crazy journalist you. Let's hear one of the questions. I'll bet there's one in the next paragraph.
McGwire is smaller now, but still a marvelous physical specimen. He is clearly a fitness freak whose 46-year-old body looks remarkably younger. Just because he told us he's done with performance-enhancing drugs doesn't mean that he is. We still have no idea if he still dabbles with the undetected stuff like human growth hormone or if he still has access to those people who provided him with drugs that are supposed to be available only by prescription to sick people. We still don't know if he would counsel any of his hitters on the magical powers of some new exotic designer elixir. Drugs did, after all, prove to be the secret to his success, not that scripted con about his "God-given talent."
Okay, I didn't actually see a question in there but I am gonna assume that McGwire does currently use performance enhancing drugs and that he's gonna tell all Cardinals hitters to use performance enhancing drugs and I'm gonna go one step further and predict that Big Mac will cause a major collapse in the commercial real estate market.
So please pardon our skepticism. We still don't know what might happen behind closed doors with a man who is an admitted drug cheat.
Burwell should have written this: So please pardon the skepticism I completely lacked back when McGwire was using steroids. I have that skepticism now, ten years too late and you know what? I have no idea what will happen in the future. I, Bryan Burwell, am not clairvoyant.
This is what the Cardinals, McGwire, Tony La Russa and Selig have brought on themselves, and it's not going to go away with wishful thinking or a team of high-priced spin doctors.
What have they brought on themselves, exactly? Oh, yes: This. This is totally what they've brought on themselves. This. Man, does This ever suck. This, apparently is the skepticism of Bryan Burwell. And given that it took him a decade to find said skepticism, I think it's safe to say that This is not going away any time soon.
I hate people.