Mark McGwire Ought to be in Baseball’s Hall of Fame

 by Aaron Goldstein  

| View comments |  Print This Post

As a baseball player, Mark McGwire should be judged solely by what he did on the playing field.

To the surprise of almost no one the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWA) on January 9th overwhelmingly rejected Mark McGwire for entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  In order to be inducted a player must receive 75% of the vote; McGwire received a paltry 23.5%.  Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn, who will be officially inducted into Cooperstown this summer, received 98.5% and 97.7% of the vote, respectively.

While I am pleased to see both Ripken and Gwynn elected to the Hall of Fame it is a shame that Mark McGwire will not be joining them at the dais this year.  If not for the hysteria surrounding steroids in baseball and McGwire’s controversial testimony in front of the House Government Reform Committee in March 2005, I submit that McGwire would have been elected alongside Ripken and Gwynn.

When one mentions the name Mark McGwire one is still likely to conjure up the summer of 1998, when McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased and eclipsed Roger Maris’ single season homerun record.  After the bitterness of the 1994 players’ strike, the pursuit of the record by McGwire and Sosa was precisely what the game needed.   

But when I think of Mark McGwire I think of the 1987 season.  It is hard to fathom but it was 20 seasons ago when McGwire quite literally exploded into the stratosphere of the elites of Major League Baseball.   At the time I was a fan of the Detroit Tigers (who would win the American League East Division that season) and every time the Tigers faced the Oakland Athletics it seemed that McGwire hit a homerun.  I am sure nearly every team in the AL felt that way.

McGwire would unanimously win AL Rookie of the Year, clubbing 49 home runs, driving in 118 runs while hitting a respectable .289.  Perhaps the most amazing thing about that season was that McGwire’s name did not appear on the All-Star Ballot.  Yes, McGwire was not expected to be the Athletics' starting first baseman in 1987.  That job was expected to be filled by someone named Rob Nelson, a career .178 hitter who played parts of five seasons in the major leagues with the Athletics and the San Diego Padres.   Needless to say, when McGwire started hitting homerun after homerun fans who wanted to see him in the All-Star Game were left with no choice but to vote for him as a write-in candidate.  This was especially true for Athletics fans, whose ballpark would host the All-Star Game that season.  Though thousands of miles away I, too, cast a write-in ballot for McGwire.  And it worked.  McGwire would become only the second player in major league baseball history to be chosen to start in the All-Star Game in that manner.  Fred Lynn was the first to do so in 1975 for the Boston Red Sox.  It would be the first of McGwire’s twelve appearances at the mid-summer classic.

“Big Mac” would become one half of the “Bash Brothers” with Jose Canseco.  McGwire and Canseco led the Oakland Athletics to three consecutive American League pennants and appearances in the World Series from 1988 to 1990, winning the Earthquake Series of 1989 against the San Francisco Giants.  McGwire became the first player in major league history to begin his major league career with four consecutive seasons of 30 or more homeruns.  (This feat has since been equaled twice over by Albert Pujols – another protégé of Tony La Russa.)  He was also an excellent defensive first baseman.  While generally overshadowed by Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees, McGwire did win a Gold Glove for his work at the corner position in 1990.  After an off season in 1991 in which he batted only .201, McGwire rebounded in 1992 and proved he could lead his team offensively without Canseco, hitting 42 homeruns and 104 runs driven en route to another AL West Division Title.  McGwire would finish 4th in the AL MVP balloting that season, beaten out by his teammate, future Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley. 

Injuries, mostly to his back, would then catch up with McGwire as he missed more than 200 games during the 1993 and 1994 seasons.  It was after recovering from these injuries that McGwire began the most productive and controversial phase of his career.  While batting only 317 times during the 1995 season McGwire hit an astonishing 39 homeruns with 90 RBI.  In 1996, McGwire enjoyed his healthiest season since 1992 by batting a career high .312 while swatting 52 homeruns and knocking in 113 runs.  While McGwire was productive, the Oakland teams of the mid 1990s were not as good as the ones that dominated the American League in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  By this time his longtime skipper Tony La Russa had left the Athletics to take over the managerial reins of the St. Louis Cardinals (a position he still holds) and McGwire wanted to reunite with La Russa.  On July 31, 1997, McGwire was traded to the Cardinals for pitchers Eric Ludwick, T.J. Mathews and Blake Stein.  It was quite a lopsided trade.  Of the three pitchers only Mathews put in significant time in the majors, enjoying a decent career as a middle reliever.  For his part, McGwire became the first player to lead the major leagues in homeruns without leading either league in that category.  Of McGwire’s 58 homeruns, he hit 34 with Oakland and 24 with the Cardinals.  McGwire hit those 24 homeruns in only 174 at-bats and Cardinals fans couldn’t have been happier.  That is until 1998.

Even as North America followed McGwire and Sosa’s chase it was not without controversy – or at least a manufactured one.  During the chase, McGwire admitted to using androstenedione (a.k.a. andro), a dietary supplement which assisted him in dealing with his ongoing injuries.  Detractors stated it enhanced his performance.  But let’s be clear.  If you take a pill, any pill, you will not be able to start hitting homeruns much less hit a baseball.  It cannot happen.  Whatever the case, andro was not banned by Major League Baseball and at the time was available over the counter.  As of 2005, it is a federal crime to possess andro as a result of amendments made by Congress to the Controlled Substance Act.   At the time McGwire took andro he did nothing wrong.  To hold this against him is petty beyond belief.

I must confess that on September 8, 1998, for the one and only time in my life I skipped work so that I could watch McGwire break Maris’ record.  I had hoped that he would have broken the record the day before, on Labor Day, so that I did not have to resort to such a tactic.  McGwire hit his 61st homerun off the well-traveled Chicago Cubs pitcher Mike Morgan on that Labor Day game.  The following night in the bottom of the 4th inning, McGwire hit a low line drive off Cubs starter Steve Trachsel that just cleared the left field wall.  It went the shortest distance of any of his homeruns that year.  I remember McGwire being greeted at the plate by his son Matthew, enjoying a bear hug with Sosa whom he happened to be playing against, and finally going into the stands to share a moment with the Maris family.  When Maris eclipsed Babe Ruth in 1961 few wanted him to do it.  Little could have been further from the truth 27 years later.  McGwire went on to shatter the record.  He would hit four homeruns in the final series of the regular season against the Montreal Expos, including his 70th off Carl Pavano.  He would finish runner-up to Sosa in the National League MVP balloting.

In many ways, McGwire was a lot like Maris – a shy, reticent man who could hit the ball a long way.  The presence of the gregarious Sosa took a lot of the heat off McGwire and he seemed to enjoy his time in the spotlight more than he might have.  Yet he never milked it.  McGwire seldom did commercial endorsements and when he did appear in public it was to raise awareness of bed wetting for the National Kidney Foundation, or to raise awareness for child abuse. He would eventually establish the Mark McGwire Foundation, an organization that provides grants to organizations that work with children who have suffered physical and sexual abuse.   

The following season, I saw McGwire play in person for the first and only time.  It was at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.  As it turned out, he only got into the game to play late inning defense in an extra inning game that saw the Cardinals lose to the Expos 8-7.  But I did get to see him take batting practice.  It was an awesome sight to behold.  A couple of months later, McGwire would dazzle North America during the Home Run Derby at the 1999 All-Star Game at Boston’s Fenway Park as he slammed homerun after homerun onto Lansdowne Street and even a couple onto the Massachusetts Turnpike.   McGwire hit .278 with 65 homeruns and led the NL with 147 RBI.  

McGwire’s injuries, however, would catch up with him.  In 2000, McGwire was limited to playing 89 games.  However, he did hit .305 with 32 homeruns and 73 RBI in only 236 at-bats.  The Cardinals would win the NL Central Division that season before falling to the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series.  McGwire’s final season was in 2001.  Although he hit 29 homeruns in only 299 at-bats, he would bat only .187 – the worst average of his major league career.  This was also the season that Barry Bonds would eclipse McGwire’s short-lived single season homerun record with 73.  My father believes that Bonds supplanting him motivated his retirement.  I disagree.  The Cardinals would reach the post-season again in 2001 but were ousted by the Arizona Diamondbacks (the eventual World Series Champions) in the National League Division Series.  During the NLDS, La Russa felt he could not rely on McGwire and in the deciding Game 5 removed him for a pinch hitter.  LaRussa sent Kerry Robinson, a journeyman outfielder who has played with nine major league organizations, to bat for McGwire.  This more than anything else is what convinced McGwire to hang up his spikes.  

Since his retirement, McGwire has rarely been seen in public.  He found himself unexpectedly back in the spotlight in 2005 when his former “Bash Brother” Jose Canseco released his book Juiced, which accused former Oakland Athletics and Texas Rangers teammates McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez, Jason Giambi and Juan Gonzalez of using steroids.  As a result of Canseco’s book, Congress would summon several current and former players including McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro and Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling to testify before the House Government Reform Committee.  

During the hearing it was abundantly clear that McGwire wanted to be in Washington about as much as most of us would like to sit in a dentist’s chair.  He was clearly uncomfortable as he repeatedly told the Congressmen assembled that he was not there “to talk about the past.”  He stated, “My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself.”  After the hearing, Representative William Lacy Clay, of Missouri’s 1st District, called upon the Missouri State Legislature to remove McGwire’s name from a five-mile stretch of the I-70 Highway that had been named in his honor in 1999.  This was the start of the backlash that led to the overwhelming rejection by the BBWA for entry into the Hall of Fame.

But as McGwire himself pointed out during the hearing he was damned if he did and damned if he did not:

Asking me or any other player to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve the problem.  If a player answers 'No,' he simply will not be believed; if he answers ‘Yes,’ he risks public scorn and endless government investigations.

If McGwire admitted to using steroids he would be ostracized.  If McGwire didn’t admit to using steroids he would be ostracized.  If McGwire wouldn’t say either way he would be ostracized.  The mere fact that his name was associated with this mess was enough to ruin his career, whether he took steroids or not.  You might as well call McGwire a communist or a witch while you’re at it.

Let’s put it another way.  The use of anabolic steroids was not prohibited in baseball until 2004.  If we are to assume that McGwire did in fact use steroids during his playing career why must he be punished?    To punish him for acts that were not prohibited by Major League Baseball would be akin to a prosecutor indicting someone for committing an act that was not illegal at the time it was committed.  Can someone say Ronnie Earle?  It would be unfair and unjust to punish McGwire retroactively.  

If one believes that McGwire used steroids during his playing career and refused to name other names one could conclude that many of McGwire’s contemporaries used steroids as has been contended by Jose Canseco.  If other players used steroids then why didn’t they achieve McGwire’s statistics?  Could it be that steroids aren’t the magic they are made out to be.  Again, there is no pill that will make you hit a homerun.  Can steroids truly enhance one’s performance or are they merely a means by which to play through injury?  Aside from the fact that McGwire could always hit for power even as a skinny rookie twenty years ago, one must consider the diminished quality of pitching, smaller ballparks, “juiced” baseballs and a tighter strike zone to explain increased homerun production by McGwire.   

Mark McGwire finished his career with 583 homeruns, placing him 7th on the all-time list.  Like it or not, that’s what he did on paper.  He also put butts in seats.  One of the few endorsements he did accept was for Nike where he received the adoration of Heather Locklear.  Yes, chicks do dig the long ball.  And so do guys.  Half the fun was showing up 90 minutes before game time to watch him take batting practice as I did all those years ago in Montreal.  I assure you nobody was asking for their money back.  Nobody in Fenway Park thinks steroids when David Ortiz steps up to the plate.  If Ortiz did test positive, people would scram faster than you can say strike three.  But I haven’t seen anyone complain when Big Papi hits a game-winning homerun.

McGwire will remain on the Hall of Fame ballot until 2021.  If the BBWA chooses not to elect him to Cooperstown by that time, McGwire could only get in through the Veterans’ Committee which, if anything, has proven to be a tougher crowd than even the baseball writers.  Some sportswriters have suggested that if he were to come clean his chances for induction might improve.  Hal Bodley of USA Today writes:

McGwire needs to come out and set the record straight.  If he did some things he regrets, say so.  Maybe he felt peer pressure.  It was a crazy time for everybody.  Even reporters have said they made mistakes in the way they covered the steroids era.

But if McGwire would talk openly, go to schools and ballparks and yes, the Hall of Fame, and deliver a message, he would be lauded for being a stand up guy.

I disagree.  If McGwire did what Bodley suggests it would be seen as self-serving and too little, too late.  It would be perceived as a cynical ploy to maneuver his way into the Hall of Fame.  It wouldn’t do a bit of good.

To his credit, the newly inducted Tony Gwynn has stood by McGwire.  During a conference call Gwynn said, “In the late 1980s and early 90’s, we had no rules.  We knew, players knew, owners knew, everybody knew, and we didn’t say anything about it.  As a player I kind of focused on what was going on the field, and as far as I’m concerned he dominated an era.”  

Gwynn should know something about domination.  He won eight National League batting titles, tying him with Honus Wagner.  Only Ty Cobb won more batting titles with 11 for the Detroit Tigers of the American League.

If it’s a question of sage words I’ll take Tony Gwynn over Hal Bodley any day.  

As a baseball player, Mark McGwire should be judged solely by what he did on the playing field.  Under that criteria, there must be room for Mark McGwire inside the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.  His exclusion as well as that of Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson scarcely entitle it to be called a Hall of Fame.

Culture: Sports

Read more articles by Aaron Goldstein