McGwire Claus

On Monday, my childhood hero announced that the speculation attached to his name for the last five years was more than conjecture. That the accusations made by his former bash brother were more than sensationalized pull quotes to sell a book. That the debate about whether he had used performance-enhancing drugs was no longer debatable. That’s because on Monday, Mark McGwire admitted to using steroids. Or in other words, Santa Claus wasn’t real….

If I had a time machine, I’d go back to my 8-year-old self and give him some advice. I’d find him sitting on the edge of his Dad’s bed in New Jersey, struggling to stay awake and watch the end of Game 1 of the World Series, live from Los Angeles. I’d go to bed that night saddened by the loss of my favorite team. But as I would later learn, I was rooting for the wrong guys. The year was 1988. The game would go down in history as one of baseball’s all-time best, and as I find myself now working in the very same building in which Kirk Gibson’s home run soared into the All-You-Can-Eat (nee Right Field) Pavilion, I realize that that his game winning shot off Dennis Eckersley represented much more than a Dodger victory. Rather, it was the baseball gods speaking through Gibson’s bat as good prevailed over evil. You see, McGwire claimed in his statements that the reason he took steroids was to help him heal from injury. In a beautiful twist of fate, only appreciated through the eyes of hindsight, Gibson was injured going into the series. He could barely walk. But without the aid of steroids, without the aid of HGH, and with only the aid of a Tommy Lasorda pep talk and his natural talents, Kirk Gibson stepped to the plate and won the game off Oakland’s Hall of Fame closer. A Hollywood ending if there ever was one. If only I could tell myself then, that this was a moment to savor rather than stew over. A moment I could have re-lived with my friends on the driveway, rather than mimicking the Canseco/McGwire bash. A moment I would have cherished until the day I walked into Dodger Stadium with an employee badge and fulfilled what might have been a childhood dream.

Instead, I took the path most traveled. I believed in the power of the home run. (Its not just chicks who dig the long ball.) And over the next 10 years, I watched, defended and cheered for McGwire. At summer camp, in the middle of the Pennsylvania woods, I’d find the library (yes the camp library of all places) as often as possible so I could check the latest box scores, see how McGwire was doing and how he stacked up in the home run race (somehow guys like Rob Deer and Mo Vaughn were always in the running at that point in the season). These moments were shared with my just-as-devoted-to-baseball cousin and being that this ritual would usually take place in early July, we’d joke about how many home runs McGwire would need to hit in order to break Roger Maris’ all-time record. Wouldn’t that be something, perhaps in our lifetimes we thought.

As I grew up, I’d go to games when McGwire was in town to play the Yankees (during his Oakland days) and later the Mets, when he was a member of the Cardinals. I can remember watching Big Mac hit two home runs against the Bronx Bombers during an injury-plagued season in which he only hit 9 total. I remember talking back to those Mattingly fans sitting in our section, making fun of what an average player he really was despite the Donnie Baseball lovers all around me. Once again, if I could tell myself to root for Mattingly, rather than McGwire, the fact that I now work with Coach Mattingly could have been even more rewarding.

Across the Triborough Bridge at Shea Stadium, friends and I took in a double-dip between St. Louis and the Mets in 1998 - THE year. The year baseball would change forever. And despite New York fans cursing at me for wearing a McGwire jersey to their stadium, I left the game with nothing but smiles as Big Mac hit his 50^th of the season that day (not to mention his 51^st) en route to a record. (We did leave quickly, however, considering the foul-mouth fans had close to 18 innings to get good and drunk.)

Later that fall, when I went off to college, my attention was somewhat diverted to the new world around me: Lecture halls, girls, house parties, girls, and at the time, a respectable Syracuse football program. Despite it all, I managed to continue tracking McGwire’s assault on the record books (an appropriate phrase, don’t you think?). And on September 8^th, 1998, as McGwire trotted around the bases for the 62^nd time that season and embraced his son, his teammates, Sammy Sosa and the Maris family, I too was embraced from friends and family across the country. My adoration of this baseball immortal was no secret, and I received calls and even emails - from those technically advanced - congratulating me on the historic blast.

The country would fall in love with McGwire that summer and conversely, I began to ease off my fascination with him. For years, I had dreamed of him breaking Maris’ record and when it finally happened, and the dust settled on the numerous pieces of memorabilia I now owned commemorating the eventual 70 spot McGwire would post that season, the fantasy was over. It was now reality, or so I thought. I’m sure the parties and the girls (and the lectures too!) made it easier to move past my boyhood dreams, but his role in my life was not over yet. In fact, it actually relates to the afore mentioned girls as I was introduced to my now wife because she had a news clipping about McGwire’s record tacked to her collegiate cork board. I can’t make this stuff up. Even our rabbi made note of McGwire and his role in our first encounter at our wedding during the actual ceremony - under the Chupah no less!

And now. After feeling sad for the man after he was pinch-hit for by Kerry Robinson in his last at bat. After suffering through the embarrassment of the 2005 congressional hearings. After reading Jose Canseco’s tell-all book and seeing McGwire’s peers shot down one by one, Monday was not a complete surprise. It was a slow decline to this moment, from the minute he crossed home plate with his Bunyan-sized smile, to the tearful apologies given to Bob Costas last night, finally proving that there was no such thing as a seventy home-run hitter.

Of course its not as simple as that. I can’t go back in time to warn myself, nor can I relive my childhood as a fan of Don Mattingly rather than Mark McGwire. One of Mark’s quotes during his interview went like this. “"Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.” Looks like he could use a time machine too.