It was just a matter of time before Mark McGwire confessed.
Everybody knew he was going to have to face the music when it was announced that he would be the St. Louis Cardinals hitting coach in 2010.
It had to happen. And sooner rather than later.
The timing of McGwire's announcement was a bit intriguing. Normally you'll see bad news hit the websites and news and sports outlets late in a week. But not this time. It came on a Monday.
McGwire apparently sent the Associated Press a release announcing that he used performance enhancing drugs several times throughout his career, including that magical 1998 season when he belted 70 home runs.
My reaction? Um, yeah. Tell me something I didn't already know.
It didn't take long for other media outlets to blow the story up once the AP got the ball rolling. McGwire had an hour-long interview with Bob Costas on the Major League Baseball Network on Monday night.
I did not see that interview, but it was a big topic last Tuesday morning on the Dan Patrick Radio Show, which is simulcast on DirectTV's 101 Network every day.
I found it really amusing how some people reacted to what McGwire said in the interview with Costas.
Apparently, and I remind you I did not see the interview, McGwire said that he really didn't believe that the performance enhancing drugs that he took helped him hit home runs. He said that he had always been a home run hitter.
He's got a point. The guy, when healthy, could always hit the long ball.
All I heard all Tuesday morning from Dan Patrick is how McGwire could really believe that taking steroids and HGH didn't help him hit home runs.
To be honest, it was brought up so many times that it was almost too much for me. But I kept watching the three-hour show, anyway.
Patrick kept going on and on about it. He kept asking how McGwire could really believe that.
Here's the thing, though... It appears that is exactly what McGwire believes. He said he took the performance enhancing drugs to get back on the field when injured, and to stay on the field during the long 162-game season.
Who really knows how much farther steroids or human growth hormones makes a baseball go when hit dead on by Mark McGwire?
The answer is nobody. Who's to say it'll go an extra 20 feet, or 50 feet. Nobody knows for sure if has any real affect on that situation.
Do performance enhancing drugs give a player an advantage? Sure they do.
However, how much of advantage did it really give McGwire. After all, he played during the "Steroid Era".
Who knows, maybe 75-80 percent of the pitchers that were throwing to McGwire were juiced up. Maybe 75 percent of the other hitters were juiced up.
Nobody can say for sure how many players from, lets say, 1990-2005 were actually taking some sore of performance enhancer. We'll never know the answer, and that's why I found Patrick's utter disbelief so amusing.
McGwire came clean. He admitted to getting "help" during his playing days. Does it really matter if he believes it didn't make a big difference in how many home runs he it?
Who cares. He's one of a small handful of players to actually admit to using performance enhancing drugs, and in the past when a player fessed up it was a story for a week or so and then it went away and those players got on with their lives.
At least McGwire looked awfully sincere in his interview with Costas.
Who remembers Alex Rodriguez dealing with the media when he "came clean." I'm here to tell you, if information about Rodriguez's use of performance enhancers hadn't been leaked then he would have never come clean about it. In fact, if you recall, he met the press and told one story, then a few days later he told another story.
One of those stories was apparently good enough, as the story died out a short time later.
I really hope McGwire's story dies out soon, too. He's come clean, which, by the way, was something he said he wanted to do in 2005 at a Congressional hearing but didn't in fear that some others would get into trouble if he answered truthfully while under oath.
McGwire said that if he had immunity at that hearing that he would have come clean then. But he didn't, and it took roughly five years for him to come clean.
But the bottom line is that he did come clean. That's all that should matter now. But we'll see, as we get closer and closer to spring training, if that will really be the case.