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Dizik
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McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:02 am

Mark McGwire wrote:
I did steroids.

I'd like to have this signed and notarized by Captain Obvious and put in the "No ****, Sherlock" file.

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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:37 am

Kinda makes me wonder why he bothered to admit it now. Guilty conscience finally got to him?
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 2:04 am

just brew it! wrote:
Kinda makes me wonder why he bothered to admit it now. Guilty conscience finally got to him?

I say its a... i haven't been in the spotlight in a while yet - and i could use some cash... sort of thing
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 2:15 am

Jive wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Kinda makes me wonder why he bothered to admit it now. Guilty conscience finally got to him?

I say its a... i haven't been in the spotlight in a while yet - and i could use some cash... sort of thing

:lol: Heh... a "no publicity is bad publicity" stunt, then? Not sure I agree... but I suppose it's possible.

Meh. Just one more reason I tend not to follow pro sports. (The McGwire thing was unavoidable; you'd had to have been living under a rock not to hear of it.)
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:06 am

I think he just wanted to put it behind him so he could finally move on and be a hitting coach. Or maybe he thinks now that he has admitted to it more people will put him on their hall of fame ballot in the coming years.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:16 am

I think it's got more to do with the fact that he's now back in the employ of a Major League team and that he can no longer hide from the public.

I watched his whole interview with Bob Costas last night on MLB Network. It was kind of interesting. A quick synopsis of it here (and some editorial). I agree with the writer that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he believed every word he said, up to and including his belief that the steroids did not help his power numbers.

And, of course, my Cub fan friends are all having a big party. :lol: If your team can't perform on the field you might as well rejoice in...whatever this was. It wasn't a fall from grace, that came 5 years ago before Congress.
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Dizik
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:20 am

Obsidian wrote:
Or maybe he thinks now that he has admitted to it more people will put him on their hall of fame ballot in the coming years.
One would think voters would be less inclined to vote for an admitted user of steroids. Then again, I don't follow baseball any more, so I have no idea what the voting community cares about these days. If the likes of Mark McGwire and/or Jose Canseco are ever admitted into the HoF, then why the hell has Pete Rose been refused for so long? It boggles the mind.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:28 am

Dizik, you're right. On the whole, the BBWAA is having a series of seizures of self-righteous indignation, each member falling over one another in an effort to be the first person to proclaim McGwire a disgrace.
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gerbilspy
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:34 am

He didn't do it for HOF votes, or money. He did it to try to clear the air so he could rejoin the sport. He will be a great hitting coach. His hitting skills were there LONG before he took the steroids, and his work with Skip Shumaker and Matt Holiday proves he can teach. The reason I can say he didn't do it for $ was because he retired with an unsigned contract for $10 million in his hands. If he were money hungry he would have signed it and collected it despite the fact that he knew his career was really over. Not many folks in this world would pass up $10 million if all it took to get it was a signature and a year playing baseball.

Now let's see if Mr. Cub Sammy Sosa will come clean...will he have the balls?
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:43 am

gerbilspy wrote:

Now let's see if Mr. Cub Sammy Sosa will come clean...will he have the balls?

If he does, they are all shrunken from the roids. :P

I wonder if any of his defenders are now hanging their heads in shame.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 12:49 pm

PRIME1 wrote:

I wonder if any of his defenders are now hanging their heads in shame.


Cub fans are mostly "immune" to shame b y now!
How else could anyone endure 100+ years of Championship-free humiliation? :)
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 12:54 pm

gerbilspy, I think he meant McGwire's defenders (since he's the one admitting it here, not Sosa). As a defender myself I found I went through all five stages of grief last night and I'm pretty much over it.

I still have that (free!) McGwire plaque that idchafee sent me hanging over my desk next to the Cardinals wall clock I bought in St. Louis a few years back. Mostly because I don't know what I'd hang there instead.
Last edited by derFunkenstein on Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:21 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
gerbilspy, I think he meant McGwire's defenders

I was. As I recall there were a number of defenders. (Not on here, I just meant in general).

Same goes for Sosa though.

I think they did an informal poll of HoF voters and they pretty much said that none of the Juicers would get in.

Although I think MLB is as much to blame as the players.


gerbilspy wrote:
PRIME1 wrote:
Cub fans are mostly "immune" to shame b y now!
How else could anyone endure 100+ years of Championship-free humiliation? :)


<- Lions fan :cry:
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:27 pm

Sorry PRIME. :oops:

I was just so anxious to tweak the Cub fans...it is so much fun that I jumped the gun!

Don't feel bad about the Lions, just take consolation in the fact that they were far superior to the RAMS this year. :)
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 2:02 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
I think it's got more to do with the fact that he's now back in the employ of a Major League team and that he can no longer hide from the public.
Yeah, it was more that they couldn't put it off any longer and not have it be a distraction going into Spring Training (and they couldn't do it much earlier and not have it get mixed up in the HoF announcements or the Winter Meetings). Everybody who was paying attention knew this was coming as soon as the Cardinals hired him last fall -- this, and how he was going to clear the air about it, would've been part of the hiring interview you can be certain -- the only question was how he was going to do it.

At least his manager should be understanding of lapses.

Personally, considering how baseball was promoting the longball and all the fans were digging it at the time, I have trouble working up much indignation against the doping players in general or McGwire in particular. I do feel sorry for the few guys who weren't doping and who had what would otherwise be great seasons overshadowed by those who were (or who never made it out of the minors because some doper took their spot, but I suspect there weren't many of those).
 
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 2:06 pm

gerbilspy wrote:

Don't feel bad about the Lions, just take consolation in the fact that they were far superior to the RAMS this year. :)

That just means we get second pick in the draft instead of first. :x

Not that we haven't wasted our draft choices in the last 10 years or so anyway.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 4:25 pm

I don't see the big deal. If I had a HoF vote I'd vote in the known steroid users. Like all eras in sports they were cheating to the best of their abilities. Any thought otherwise just seems willful ignorance.

A number of the steroid users will get in and chances are a number are already in.
 
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 4:58 pm

Skrying wrote:
I don't see the big deal. If I had a HoF vote I'd vote in the known steroid users. Like all eras in sports they were cheating to the best of their abilities. Any thought otherwise just seems willful ignorance.

A number of the steroid users will get in and chances are a number are already in.


Agreed. Ball players have been broken every rule made. Steroids were not prohibited by the rules of baseball when McGwire was playing...and tons of players admit that amphetamines have been routinely used, even though illegal. For 100 yrs the rules were ignored...until steroids came along.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Tue Jan 12, 2010 5:29 pm

gerbilspy wrote:
For 100 yrs the rules were ignored...until steroids came along.

Tell that to Pete Rose. :P
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 11:23 am

Pete Rose's absence just burns my britches. It'd be like keeping Jordan or Barkley out of the basketball hall of fame. They are both raging gamblers . Pete was such a hardnose player that I truly believe him when he said he never bet against his team, because he's too big of a competitor to give up a single game.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 11:30 am

Who cares? Honestly, the pitchers (Clemens) were juicing, and the hitters were juicing... then whats the real problem? No one had an unfair advantage.
 
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 11:39 am

Corrado wrote:
Who cares? Honestly, the pitchers (Clemens) were juicing, and the hitters were juicing... then whats the real problem? No one had an unfair advantage.

I'm sure there are plenty of players who did not use roids, who probably got shafted by all this. Their stats\pay\career surely suffered because they took the high road. Or at the very least chose not to risk their health\dignity\ethics by using.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 11:59 am

PRIME1 wrote:
Corrado wrote:
Who cares? Honestly, the pitchers (Clemens) were juicing, and the hitters were juicing... then whats the real problem? No one had an unfair advantage.

I'm sure there are plenty of players who did not use roids, who probably got shafted by all this. Their stats\pay\career surely suffered because they took the high road. Or at the very least chose not to risk their health\dignity\ethics by using.


Thats understood, but at the same time, they weren't doing something against the rules of baseball, merely against the law (merely? ha). There was no testing, and a wink wink nudge nudge with the league. To say that hitters had an unfair advantage is BS as we know of at least 2 pitchers that were using steroids in Pettite and Clemens, and who knows who else was using.
 
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:26 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Pete Rose's absence just burns my britches. It'd be like keeping Jordan or Barkley out of the basketball hall of fame. They are both raging gamblers . Pete was such a hardnose player that I truly believe him when he said he never bet against his team, because he's too big of a competitor to give up a single game.


From what I've read, there is only one rule that is printed out and displayed in every clubhouse in baseball and it is the rule the covers gambling on baseball. From wikipedia: "Baseball's Rule 21, prominently posted in every clubhouse locker room, mandates permanent banishment from the sport for having a gambling interest of any sort on a game in which a player or manager is directly involved."

I think that Rose will have a harder time getting into the HoF than anyone associated with steroids since Rose passed by this sign once or twice a day for 25+ years and still continued to gamble on his sport.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:53 pm

PRIME1 wrote:
I'm sure there are plenty of players who did not use roids, who probably got shafted by all this. Their stats\pay\career surely suffered because they took the high road. Or at the very least chose not to risk their health\dignity\ethics by using.


And? Again, every era of every professional sport had its share of cheaters. To play ignorant of that is even worse than the cheating in my opinion. It's the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" nonsense that builds these issues.
 
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 1:55 pm

He did a follow up interview and simply came across as a lying cheat to me. They asked him why if he took roids "to get healthy" he continued using even after he was not only healthy but breaking records. He stumbled and fumbled and claimed he was "breaking down". Bull spit.


Corrado wrote:

Thats understood, but at the same time, they weren't doing something against the rules of baseball, merely against the law (merely? ha). There was no testing, and a wink wink nudge nudge with the league. To say that hitters had an unfair advantage is BS as we know of at least 2 pitchers that were using steroids in Pettite and Clemens, and who knows who else was using.

I am by no means absolving MLB in this. In fact they are equally at blame here. It's one of the reasons that I no longer watch baseball or even take it seriously. It's more on the level of "professional" wrestling.


Skrying wrote:

And? Again, every era of every professional sport had its share of cheaters. To play ignorant of that is even worse than the cheating in my opinion. It's the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" nonsense that builds these issues.

Saying other people were thieves so it's OK for him to steal may make it OK in your book, but not mine.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 4:31 pm

PRIME1 wrote:
Saying other people were thieves so it's OK for him to steal may make it OK in your book, but not mine.


Where did I say that? I don't believe it's fine for any one to cheat. But I do believe cheating is rampant in professional sports from the minor leagues to the professionals from baseball to soccer, from the NFL to the Olympic games. You're condemning the people who have been caught or admitted. I'm simply saying you're a fool if you believe that many of your beloved athletes weren't bending or fully breaking the rules to get an advantage over the field. I don't believe leaving out an entire era of baseball is the proper way to address the problem. You come across as wanting to act like it never happened at all. You're doomed to repeat the same mistakes instead of facing them head on. Cheating will happen, we must open our eyes, point it out and better our future and not try to rewrite the past.
 
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 4:41 pm

Skrying wrote:
PRIME1 wrote:
Saying other people were thieves so it's OK for him to steal may make it OK in your book, but not mine.


Where did I say that? I don't believe it's fine for any one to cheat. But I do believe cheating is rampant in professional sports from the minor leagues to the professionals from baseball to soccer, from the NFL to the Olympic games. You're condemning the people who have been caught or admitted. I'm simply saying you're a fool if you believe that many of your beloved athletes weren't bending or fully breaking the rules to get an advantage over the field. I don't believe leaving out an entire era of baseball is the proper way to address the problem. You come across as wanting to act like it never happened at all. You're doomed to repeat the same mistakes instead of facing them head on. Cheating will happen, we must open our eyes, point it out and better our future and not try to rewrite the past.


Punish the people caught cheating. Simple as that. Ban all the juicers from the HoF and wipe their records. That would hopefully send a message to everyone that it's not acceptable.

Sadly there are plenty of people like you who at the very least accept it (or even embrace it), hence MLB has no real reason to fix it. So they may as well throw in a tag team cage match to the next world series because it's all fake.
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 6:22 pm

PRIME1 wrote:
I'm sure there are plenty of players who did not use roids, who probably got shafted by all this. Their stats\pay\career surely suffered because they took the high road. Or at the very least chose not to risk their health\dignity\ethics by using.


Here's one right here:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... fr04.shtml

One of the best hitters ever who didn't get any recognition. And I'd be shocked if he was on anything.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... ke02.shtml

Another one I'm pretty sure about
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Re: McGwire admits the obvious

Wed Jan 13, 2010 6:53 pm

The whole thing is a big mess. Some, like Big Mac, will be remembered as cheats, while other unnamed but also guilty, avoid "punishment". Still other cheaters are already in the Hall (spit ballers, speed users, alcoholics)--- can they please be removed? I guess it would get extremely ugly very quickly.

The HOF should ignore it all just like it has since its creation---that way its "fair" to ALL OF THE CHEATS!

Big Mac, Barry, Alex et al should just be judged by their performance on the field. Otherwise they are just getting screwed.

OR, ignore the HOF, it is irrelevant.

I can't wait to watch the CARDS this season. The lineup of Schumaker, Rasmus, Pujols, Holliday, Ludwig, Ryan, Molina, Freese, and either Carpenter, Wainwright, Penny, or Loshe is going to be great to watch! :)

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