Going From the Hall to a Bust

Every winter, in a fat white envelope thick with reverence, the baseball Hall of Fame ballot arrives at my home.

Every winter, treading between statistics and memories, it is a process filled with questions.

This week, one was answered.

When Mark McGwire’s name is on the ballot, I will not vote for him.

It was once thought he made baseball history, but it is now clear he has stolen from it.

It was once imagined he saved the game, but it is now obvious that he was only saving himself.

Accompanying McGwire on his 1998 march toward baseball immortality, I was certain I was witnessing the last glowing moments of professional sports chivalry.

In the wake of his capitol offensive performance last week, it now seems to be the march of a cheat.

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You want to know why steroids in baseball matter?

Mark McGwire is why they matter.

Baseball was built on the shoulders of men like him, with their giant swings and disappearing hits and immortal grins.

Babe Ruth carried the sport out of scandal, Willie Mays carried it out of war, McGwire carried it out of strife.

In worlds of uncertainties, the home run was the only part of the sports landscape that made sense.

Touchdowns occurred amid a muddled mess of helmets. The home run was one tiny ball, one twisting man, one solitary jog.

Basketballs could roll or bounce through the net. The home run never did anything but soar, and was never about anything resembling luck.

If officials were not looking, you could sneak a touchdown or goal-tend a basket or stick your skate in the crease on a goal. But you couldn’t do anything to a long ball, could you?

It was the only scoring play in sports that could not be cheated.

Either the ball was gone, or it wasn’t.

Nothing better symbolized baseball’s wondrous simplicity.

And nobody in the modern era symbolized the home run more than McGwire.

Maybe no single sports act in the history of this country has been more widely celebrated than McGwire’s 62nd in 1998.

When he broke the record held by Roger Maris for 37 years, America celebrated not only a man, but a sport that once again felt green, fresh, real.

It is at this point in the column when I would normally bring in baseball or cultural experts to confirm this occurrence, but no need today, because I was there.

With thousands of others, I fought back tears listening to Stan Musial play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Busch Stadium’s home plate before one game during the chase.

Like thousands of others, I lost that fight when McGwire waded into the stands and hugged the family of the late and forgotten Maris after breaking the mark.

Here’s how I described McGwire’s feat in the next day’s newspaper:

“Courage under pressure. Dignity under fire. Greatness that does not come at the expense of class.”

Here was McGwire’s take in the same story:

“People say the country was brought together by this.... So be it. I’m happy to bring the country together.”

After Thursday, we both should be ashamed.

Because, under oath, facing a congressional hearing about illegal steroids, one of baseball’s most famous living hitters did not deny using them.

When asked to condemn steroids as cheating, he couldn’t.

When asked to send a message to fans about honor, he wouldn’t.

He was so slippery in his responses, so inappropriate in his attitude, he made Jose Canseco seem like Mother Teresa.

The lowlight was when Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a guy from the place where the record was set, asked him, “Can we look at children with a straight face and tell them that the great players like you play the game with honesty and integrity?”

McGwire paused and answered, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

It could not have been more indicting if he had begun picking his teeth with a syringe.

When Clay was speaking about children, he was speaking about my children, because I called them with daily reports during the final week of McGwire’s chase.

When he was speaking about honesty, he was speaking about all of us who grabbed on to McGwire’s balloon biceps and enjoyed the ride of a lifetime without ever asking how an average, injury-prone player could suddenly become a giant.

How a guy who had been broken down for five previous seasons could suddenly play three full seasons.

How a guy who had not hit as many as 50 homers in the previous nine seasons suddenly reached that mark for four consecutive seasons.

The same questions we asked of Barry Bonds, we never asked of McGwire, who came along when the record was still sacred and we all wanted so desperately to believe.

You want to know why steroids matter?

Because baseball, more than the other sports, is dead without that belief. Because slow, cerebral baseball is nothing more than a three-hour yawn if we don’t believe that a curving pitch still means skill, and a home run still means power.

McGwire has abused that belief more than Pete Rose, who has never been connected to gambling while he played.

McGwire should be denied entry into a Hall of Fame that should reserve a spot for Bonds, who was a great player long before the steroid scandal, and who might belong in Cooperstown for his batting eye alone.

Remember McGwire’s record-setting home run? I’ll never forget it. I was so consumed by it, a couple of years ago I selected that story to be the first one in a book of my columns.

What a fool I was. What fools we all were.

He barely flicked his wrist and the ball traveled 341 feet, yet nobody doubted, because, after all, this was baseball and miracles happen.

Steroids matter because steroids have taken that from us, that innocence, that record, that red-haired giant who has never looked so small.