Steroids...yikes.

So the last few days have been heart-wrenching for me and hopefully other baseball fans. Mark McGwire has admitted to using steroids during his career in Oakland and St. Louis, both under the watchful gaze of manager Tony La Russa...

Mark McGwire, the man who shattered Roger Maris' single season record for home runs, admitted to using steroids as early as 1989 and even during the magical chase for the single season home run record.

The 1998 season had McGwire and Sammy Sosa, of the Chicago Cubs, making baseball actually relevant again after it had started slipping in the television ratings. People were tuning in to watch these two divisional rivals face off as many times as possible. ESPN and FOX showed as many Cardinals and Cubs games and especially Cardinals vs. Cubs games, those were like ratings gold that year. That chase was so influential that even though McGwire beat out Sosa for the record, Sosa still won the National League MVP for that year. Also, neither of the two teams one the NL Central Division, the Cubs won the Wild Card but were thumped by the Atlanta Braves.

McGwire's apology for taking

them is fine, I'll accept that he is in fact sorry for taking them. I do believe that. However, he has waited so long that it doesn't even seem to mean anything anymore. He is a coward, and saying that his congressional "non" testimony was only because he couldn't be assured immunity is so far-fetched in my view. Had his attorney gone to the US Attorney's office and requested immunity for him coming forward with all that he knew, they would have given it to him in a heart beat. Do not let his "lack of immunity" hog-wash make you think he was this little man being bullied around by the courts or Congress. He is a liar and a cheat all the way back since 1989, if not earlier.

This is a three fold problem for me:

1) Mark McGwire is an admitted cheater and should be stricken from the records like "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and the rest of the Chicago "Black Sox". This would mean that Sammy

Sosa was the first person to break the record in my eyes, of course until we prove that Sammy was a junkie too. We all know he is, then Barry Bonds would be next and he's a steroid freak too (Honestly, who's head can grow like that after the age of 21?)

2) Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was McGwire's manager in Oakland when he started using steroids, became very well known while on steroids and again his manager in St. Louis when McGwire broke the record. La Russa needs to be investigated and if nothing else criticized for either his allowance of steroids in TWO of his clubhouses or criticized because he must have been a bumbling, real-life version of Mr. Magoo, not being able to see what was going on right in front of him, especially in Oakland where he coached McGwire AND Jose Canseco, an admitted steroid user and injector who says he did it for many people including "Big Mac" in Oakland's locker rooms.

3) This means that Jose Canseco was right all along and he, McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Rafael "Period" Palmero, Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte, Alex Rodriguez, and others, were in fact all taking steroids during the era. Although Commissioner Bud Selig would have us believe that the "Steroid Era" never actually existed.

I hope and pray every night that McGwire never gets into Cooperstown, that if he even walks in he will begin to feel like he's burning as a demon in that holy shrine of baseball. Tony La Russa is possibly the most evil man in baseball's history seeing as how it was his teams in two locations, that made steroids in baseball really explode onto the public stage.

I remember watching in 1998, being excited and loving each time those guys launched one over a wall. I had stopped playing baseball by that time, but I still loved the game. Sosa and McGwire were two titans dueling for all the world to see. Now, with this realization, they were no more than frauds. People may criticize me for occasionally watching professional wrestling, but at least with pro wrestling you know it's fake. More importantly...

They don't lie.