A Boy and His Needle

Let me be the first to say this… I love steroids.

OK, so I’m not the first person to say that. I’m not that original. In my defense, however, I’m not the person who finds within himself the courage, the fortitude, and the single-minded righteousness to exclaim the safest and least controversial statements in the world about steroids… and this… and this.

I don’t judge athletes who choose to do whatever they need to do in order to earn the most money in what can only be described as the shortest and most limited arc in the history of career-dom. Most prostitutes can work well into their forties, but free agents in major league baseball rarely work more than ten years, and in the first four they’re kept out of the free market.

I believe in performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. I like it when players hit home runs. I like it when they run fast and throw hard. I also enjoy knowing that when I shell out the dough for an advance ticket, my favorite players will show up to the game because their new, Wolverine-like healing abilities are protecting them from the stress and fatigue-related injuries that accompany a 162-game season.

Mark McGwire used steroids during periods of his career, more or less, since his debut as a major leaguer. He denied it his entire career, even at one point defending his use of Androstenedione, a relatively harmless muscle-builder, as an ingeniously crafted smokescreen for the drugs he was really taking. To quote Shakespeare, this was “a very excellent piece of villainy.”

Yes, looking back, now that there is absolutely no question about it, I find that I have nothing but the highest admiration for Mark McGwire’s canniness in concealing his use of steroids. They really should teach this lie in school along with Hitler’s big whopper at Munich.

But most of all, the feeling I have for Mark McGwire, besides awe, is the incredible amount of laughter that I cannot contain.

He conned everyone, and everyone knew they were being conned. He was Don King without the mouth… until it came to commercials. Here was a guy who denied using HGH, a drug that has curative properties, and for all we know could actually be good for you, but accepted endorsements and took millions of dollars to appear in commercials for McDonald’s!

AND NOBODY BLINKED!

You know, the least the Cardinals could have done was name a field-level box seat after McGwire’s endocrinologist. I mean, hey, let’s be fair.

It occurs to me that Mark McGwire is one amazing guy, and possibly the (least-intentionally) funniest person in the western world. And it wasn’t just McDonald’s. In 1998, he was all over commercial television. He was endorsing anything and everything – all kinds of products. There wasn’t one commercial that he turned down.

I can’t find it on You Tube, but I did find the transcript for one particular TV spot:

MM:     Hello, I’m Mark McGwire.  You may know me as that guy
who hits all those home runs and looks like an slightly
uglier version of the Michelin Man.  Yes, that’s me. 

But I’m not here to talk about the Michelin Man,
I’m here to tell you about a problem that,
like many of you, I suffer from:  Feminine Dryness.

There is nothing more uncomfortable than being dry
and itchy down there. That’s why I use
Vagisil® Intimate Lubricant and Vagisil® Anti-Itch Crème. 

VO:      Vagisil®.  Mark McGwire uses it.  So should you.

If you can find this TV commercial somewhere, I swear I will pay you for it.

I’m telling you, there is no way to overstate just how much of an ingenious liar Mark McGwire was. You don’t even comprehend it.  He even had an audience with Pope John Paul II, in front of 20,000 children, and stood there as His Holiness exhorted the youth of St. Louis to condition themselves spiritually just as Mark McGwire conditioned himself physically. And there he was on the stage… smiling like the goofball he wanted us to believe he was.

Seriously! This is a man who lied to the Pope… to his face! WOW!

Say what you want about McGwire and bicker amongst yourselves about how much this affects his standing in terms of eligibility in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and how he lied to the children who watched him play, but again, there is no denying it, he is one extraordinary son-of-a-bitch.

When they erect a Liars Hall of Fame, he’ll be in the Inaugural Class.