Steroids in Sports: The Mark McGwire Admission

When former major league baseball slugger Mark McGwire admitted this week that he had, indeed, taken steroids during his playing career, it was not a surprise.

Suspicion had surrounded McGwire for years, heightened by his record 1998 season in which he hit 70 home runs, and unalleviated by his evasive March 2005 testimony before a congressional committee.

McGwire’s announcement Monday was met with widespread derision for two reasons: 1) It came more than five years too late, and 2) It was incomplete.

It provided yet another example of how NOT to handle a crisis. The tried-and-true PR adage was proven once again: Tell it yourself first, and tell it all, or someone else will. In McGwire’s case, it’s more like “or let Jose Canseco tell it for you.”

Not that a complete public confession and apology will make everybody forget the transgressions, but it does go a long way toward restoring faith and resurrecting one’s image. Failing to do so—McGwire, Tiger Woods, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds—only leads to more suspicion and negative image.

One who got it right was Andy Pettite. He dealt with his steroids admission head-on and people largely moved on. The impression it leaves is, “Hey, I don’t like what he did, but he was upfront and he seems to be remorseful. I’m good with that.”

Typically when scandal surrounds an athlete, other athletes subtly invoke the “players’ code,” which refers to an unwillingness to criticize fellow athletes. That’s what made former NFL wide receiver Ed McCaffrey’s comments yesterday on his weekly radio show all the more impactful. Speaking with Denver’s ESPN 1600 AM’s “Sports Insiders,” McCaffrey challenged the scope of McGwire’s admission, and talked about the larger issue of Performance-Enhancing Drugs in sports.

“You have to be a little suspicious,” McCaffrey said. “Everybody knew that (McGwire) was juicing when he was playing. Everybody knew he was juicing after he retired. He never admitted it; swore up and down he didn’t do it. Honestly, I think that now he knows he’s probably not going to get voted into the Hall of Fame if he doesn’t admit it. He tried to do a ‘pseudo-admission’ of guilt, but the suggestion that it was only for health reasons is preposterous.”

McCaffrey has respect for what McGwire accomplished on the field, but little tolerance for those who break the rules. “There are probably guys in the Hall of Fame—or there will be—who have used Performance-Enhancing Drugs, and in my opinion you treat them all equally. If that’s something you want to not allow, then nobody who got caught using them should be in the Hall of Fame.”

McCaffrey was asked about his long-time Denver Broncos teammate Bill Romanowski, who very publicly acknowledged his past steroid use in his 2005 autobiography and “60 Minutes” interview.

“Bill came out and admitted it,” McCaffrey said Tuesday. “You’d see Bill leave to go back to California, the Bay Area, and train out there for awhile, and come back 25 pounds of muscle heavier and you’re thinking…just doing the math, ‘that’s impossible’ to get that strong that quick. I would suspect it myself. I never did see him use anything illegal and he never offered it to me, and I was a teammate. But when someone leaves for a month and comes back 25 pounds of muscle heavier it just doesn’t make any sense. People that train every day as hard as they possibly can the right way know that that’s not possible.”

What matters most to McCaffrey when evaluating the impact steroids have on sports is the integrity of the game.

“Every athlete has the ability to make the right choice or to make the wrong choice. I never made any effort to go looking for (Performance-Enhancing Drugs) nor would I ever use them. I made that choice early in my career. But it does upset me because there are players (who use PEDs), not just who will go to the Hall of Fame or to the Pro Bowl or earn a starting spot, but even make a team over another guy. The reason guys like Mark McGwire are singled out is because they’re the ones who have had unbelievable success, but imagine the guy who uses them and gets to play 5 or 6 years in the league as opposed to not making a team. It affects everybody and cheating is cheating, and it ought to be penalized when it’s discovered.”

McCaffrey is quick to draw a distinction between his disdain for the decisions one makes to cheat, and not the person who makes them.

“There are some really nice guys who are great teammates who played hard, (but) break a rule. They should be penalized for breaking the rule. It doesn’t mean you have to hate them or that they’re a bad guy all the way around. They may be a good family guy, they may be a good Dad or husband, they may do a lot in the community. But when it comes to breaking the rules in your sport you have to be penalized appropriately.”

McCaffrey’s weekly radio show airs every Tuesday at 8:25 a.m. MT on Denver’s ESPN Radio 1600 AM.

--Paul Kirk/ProLink Sports
www.prolinksports.net
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