The Steroid Era Of Baseball: Mark McGwire's Not So Shocking Admission

Mark McGwire came into the big leagues as a record breaker. His 49 home runs in 1987 is still the most ever. He won the Rookie of the Year award, which followed the Rookie of the Year award that Jose Canseco won in 1986.

McGwire and Canseco were The Bash Brothers and they powered the Oakland A's to three straight World Series appearances.

Tony LaRussa was the manager of those Oakland teams and they boasted an intense work-out regimen. That was what explained why McGwire and Canseco grew so much between the 1987 and 1988 seasons.

McGwire's home run totals over the next three season never topped 40. In 1991, injuries caused the worst year of his career with a .201 average and only 22 home runs.

The mass he put on over the winter of 1987 caused pressure on his joints. He returned with a new, meaner look for the 1992 season and returned to form with a 42 homer season.

Foot injuries limited him in 1993 and 1994. He played in only 104 games in 1995 but still was able to hit 39 home runs. He led the league in home runs in 1996 with 42. He started the 1997 season in Oakland before being traded to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Along the way, he hit 58 home runs.

Mark McGwire showed that when healthy, he is a fearsome power hitter. In the magical 1998 season, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battled daily for the home run lead.

Sosa hit 20 home runs in June alone that season on his way to a total of 66.

Mark McGwire hit 70 that season. He seemed to shy away from the attention he earned by his power hitting. We all learned what Andro was that summer as well as the attention grew with his epic home run chase.

McGwire followed that up with 65 home runs in 1999. The injury bug caught up with him in 2000 and 2001 as his career finally fell victim to the injuries that had plagued him throughout.

Jose Canseco wrote a book that turned out to be one of the more important books of the last decade. That book alone led to a hearing held by congress in 2005. Mark McGwire plead the fifth in those hearings and went into a social exile that lasted until 2010.

His old manager, Tony LaRussa, reached out to give McGwire the position of hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals. With the amount of speculation hanging over McGwire's head, the media blitz he did to come clean was not unexpected.

Just like his admission to using steroids was not unexpected.

Mark McGwire is not a Hall of Famer. He is not a victim of the steroid era in baseball. He was a young man with a great swing who bulked up at too rapid of a pace for his  body to handle.

That was the cause of his first wave of injuries. He used steroids to recover from those injuries and had what can only be called a deceptive return to the game. It was during that deceptive return that he put up the numbers that even makes him a consideration for the Hall of Fame.

The steroid era of baseball will linger over the game as long as each of the guilty confesses one at a time. There is a list out there with names on it that have been coming out one at a time. If baseball wants to start the closure then healing process, that list needs to be released.

The Hall of Fame has some hard times ahead too as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens both are one day closer to becoming eligible. Those two have denied all accusations of steroid use. They are both facing legal battles because it seems like they have lied to the feds. 

Mark McGwire put off talking about the past for a long time but he finally came clean and now he can return to baseball.