In a major surprise, former slugger Mark McGwire was introduced in October as the club’s new hitting coach, and in early 2010, stepped out of the shadows.
Currently tied for eighth on Major League Baseball’s career home run list with 583 and the former single-season leader with 70 in 1998, Mark McGwire has spent much of the past decade in seclusion.
That changed in a most surprising manner when on October 26, 2009, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa announced the reclusive McGwire was returning to baseball as the club’s full-time hitting coach for 2010.
This move would only help the 2010 Cardinals, La Russa explained. McGwire had worked in an informal hitting coach capacity in past winters near his California home. Among his students were current Cardinals Matt Holliday and Skip Schumaker and ex-Card Chris Duncan.
There was just one problem – the 800-pound gorilla in the room – McGwire’s past.
The 1998 discovery that McGwire was using a then-legal supplement banned in other sports began a marked change to the feel-good story of the former slugger, whose exciting home run chase with Sammy Sosa helped re-energize the game following strikes that had turned countless fans away.
McGwire’s problems picked up momentum as allegations of more serious steroid use were raised by his former teammate Jose Canseco and others, affirmed much later by Big Mac’s own brother Jay.
La Russa remained Big Mac’s staunchest defender following McGwire’s 2001 retirement and especially after his fateful 2005 Congressional testimony. Joining a number of then-current players subpoenaed, McGwire’s infamous refusal to discuss his past made him an unwitting symbol of baseball’s steroid era.
Having become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration four years ago, McGwire has yet to receive more than 25 percent approval in the annual vote where 75 percent is the minimum. Voters often cite the unanswered questions about Big Mac’s alleged steroid use as the reason for withholding their support.
The day McGwire’s hiring was announced, general manager John Mozeliak emphasized the new coach would meet with the press “sooner, rather than later”. Over two months later, there was still no sign of McGwire.
That is how this story should end, since the focus of this series is last year. Had I been ranking the top 20 stories of 2009 plus the first two weeks of 2010, this would have been much higher than number nine.
Because this story is so hot, I will bring it the rest of the way home – briefly, I promise, to those as weary of McGwire commentary as I.
On January 7, a new wrinkle was introduced when La Russa said that he had discussed only part jokingly with McGwire on multiple occasions about the idea that the now-46-year-old might be activated as a late-season pinch-hitter for the 2010 club. Mozeliak moved quickly to write it off as a joke.
Just four days later, a multi-step rollout plan for McGwire’s re-entry was carefully executed, reportedly under the guidance of the crisis-management firm led by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
The blitz began with a press release from the player, followed by shorter written responses from club officials and the commissioner. Next were one-on-one interviews with local media and the big show – an hour-long live interview expertly handled by MLB Network’s Bob Costas.
The eyes of baseball were upon Big Mac as he tearfully told his story – at least the parts he chose to tell. He made solid points in most every aspect, from outlining key events to showing contrition, but those gains were overshadowed by an odd refusal to acknowledge that steroids could have impacted his strength and his results on the field.
Still, if McGwire’s true intent was as he said, to relieve his guilt and open the way to becoming the Cardinals hitting coach, he met those objectives. Let others decide if he or any player from the steroid era should grace the Hall of Fame. McGwire said this wasn’t about that.
Even without McGwire’s press blitzkrieg, concluding its second day as I post this, the sheer magnitude of importance of the return of one of team’s most popular players of all time cements this story’s placement in the 2009 top 10.
Link to The Cardinal Nation Blog’s top 20 stories of the year countdown
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[...] disc, discord and departure 11. Third base turmoil 10. Kennedy’s final season Skip-ped 9. The Return of Big Mac 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. [...]
Sorry for another McGwire post, gang. The countdown just happened to work out this way and I needed to keep going. I keep getting sidetracked by current events and as a result, the top 20 is barely half done…
“Everything is reduced to an overly simple anti-imperialistic and anti-militaristic parable,” it said.
Vatican criticism of the Movie “Avatar”. Don’t you agree these are surprising and stimulating times.
Brian, in the end this might be the defining story of the year. Mark may become the mirror that Albert requires to reinvent is esteem.. I see the introduction of Holiday as a permanent player along with MM’s obviously available emotionality, as important ingredients for a “World Series Soup” recipe.
McGwire is a private guy. To face the media horde of sports pundits and talking heads, its reasonable MLB hired some PR experts and launched a carefully planned media offensive. Its reasonable that MLB (owners and union together) would rally around to protect a great player and the profession in which both sides have a common stake.
Two root issues about which people can differ.
1. Should someone care about the pristine sanctitiy of hallowed baseball records and election to the Hall of Fame? I personally do not care about whether McGwire or anyone else is elected to the Hall of Fame, thus the medicines taken by athletes to boost their muscles during the steroids era do not matter to me in the slightest. For perspective, should the records of modern pitchers who have Tommy John surgery be asterixed or invalidated, because TJ surgery was not around in the 1930s? If HoF voters want to do this, fine, I have no opinion. Medicical therapies advance through time. Things change, through time. The game is not exactly the same as it was in 1910. Modern athletes have had a variety of advantages not available to earlier generations.
2. MLB’s claim (expressed via McGwire) that muscle medicines did not make him stronger is misleading and not fully correct.
On the one hand, taking muscle medicines does not affect bone structure and make someone grow taller. Height can be a help for select tall HR hitters like McGwire, with tight swings. So McGwire’s innate ability to hit for distance may not have been altered by muscle medicines.
However, if muscle medicines help a player overcome injuries or muscle fatigue and soreness and thereby enable any man to play more games at a higher level of readiness, then of course a man can play more games and accumulate more hits. There is a positive effect on results, per year and aggregate for a career. A claim by MLB otherwise is misleading and unpersuasive. Its MLB marketing and spin. I feel sorry for Mark that they wrote such a silly script for him, in this one respect.
But as stated earlier, since I am not especially fussy or naive about changes to athletes and to the game across generations, I back McGwire and do not think he should be denigrated. He only is attacked because a great player (who did not lie to Congresspeople who wanted to exploit sports as a publicity stunt for their own re-election campaigns). Big stars are convenient lightning rods for big publicity.
Great comments by TLR IMO in this latest from Joe Strauss.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/cardinals/story/BE7AC4E6FC5699C3862576AA001585DD?OpenDocument
I really respect TLR’s support for his players, present and former. Not too many managers in the history of the game have your back like Tony. Most people run for cover when it starts getting hot in the neighborhood, not Tony. I think it is refreshing this day and time to see someone stand up for what he believes is right no matter what the cost. A man after my own heart
Along with his support of McGwire, TLR has always had a personal stake in this story. His past actions have shown he would have had Big Mac’s back either way. Just saying there is another prism through which this is and should be viewed.
Let’s not go overboard RC. Tony is guided by the same self-interest as everybody else, and has the same warped sense of what constitutes moral high ground as the folks he lines himself up against.
Consider this: Tony is a vegatarian and says he ‘won’t eat anything that once had a face’. How very noble of him. But stripping off the hide to make balls and gloves is a-o-k if it means he can make $4M a year.
So come on now, he’s just playing the game like the rest of them. I don’t care mind you, it makes for a good show, I’m just not confusing it with reality.
Yea Bling, but Tony is not eating those balls and gloves and he would argue that he is using the money he makes from their use to help other animals with faces
In regards to Tony’s backing of his players, He will support them to a fault many times IMO but will always side with his player against the world if need be. This I like. And my good lord I get sick of Molina and Albert (from time to time) walking to first on ground balls. But Tony will defend them to the end when they do it and take the heat for allowing it to happen.
Trust me I don’t fall on my knees and worship Tony like some people and have taken issue with certain things(pitcher hitting 8th, or the different lineups each day) that he does, but I do like certain things(game preparation) and backing his players is one of them.
I just can’t wrap myself around why people think that any manager should be responsible for every action of one of their players. Its not like Mark would have been shooting up in the coaches office or asking Tony to get him a fresh needle every now and then. And my knowledge of Tony and the clubhouse is that he doesn’t police the area very much, that job is left to certain players. So Tony probably rarely would be out and about in the locker room and when he was he was most likely speeding through to get to where he was going and wouldn’t pay much attention to what was happening around him. Its just more newsmen trying to stir stuff up because we all know………….dirt sells so much better than anything that is positive.
Mac will be at WWU. Bernie M. just said Mo confirmed.
I feel about the same about Tony. Those loyalties cost some games last year I figure. Cost CR too if you follow.
RC, I agree about Tony backing players. But a lot of other folks are on his side too: Selig, DeWitt, Walt Jocketty, the industry is behind a good man and they know he has endured a lot of ignorant nonsense, on behalf of other players as a scapegoat for blowhard politicians.
“Padilla, 32, has had a peculiar off-season. He was accidentally shot in the leg by a shooting instructor in his native Nicaragua. ” — Jon Paul Morosi
Last I heard the Cards and a couple other teams are looking at Padilla, so I assume this was not a serious incident, haven’t seen anything else about it.