McGwire's 'truth' will still not set him free

CONSIDERING THAT its news value was almost non-existent and that its inherent dramatic effect made it the least-shocking confessional since Boy George came out of the closet, this Mark McGwire story sure does seem to have some legs.

After nearly five years, during which his personal entry in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations seemed destined to be “I’m not here to talk about the past”, McGwire’s decision to talk about the past, or at least part of it, has managed, for two days running, to upstage the NFL playoffs in the sports pages of many American newspapers.

Mark McGwire tearfully admitting in 2010 that he used steroids during his playing career should by almost any standard qualify as a dog-bites-man story. That it has been treated otherwise – Brian Williams made it the lead item on NBC’s evening news on Monday – owes less to some heartfelt desire to make a clean breast of it by going public with his belated confessional than to a careful campaign orchestrated by former George W Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. And, judging by the reaction, you’d have to say Fleischer earned his fee with this one.

Many of those attempting to connect the superficial dots have noted that McGwire’s mea culpa came just five days after Andre Dawson (438 home runs in 21 major league seasons) received 420 of 539 votes in the balloting for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Dawson, the only player whose totals exceeded the requisite 75 per cent of the ballots cast, will be a one-man Class of 2010 at Cooperstown next July. McGwire (583 homers in 16 seasons) once again failed to improve his position; the 128 votes he got this time remain essentially unchanged from those in each of the four years his name has been on the ballot.

The notion that his legacy will be viewed differently as a result of Monday’s revelation is almost certainly misplaced. Those who have withheld their endorsement from a suspected drug cheat are unlikely to change their minds now that he is a confirmed drug cheat.

And if Mark McGwire harboured any illusions otherwise, Fleischer would surely have disabused them well before the process had been set in motion.

The timing was set less to allow for a decent interval following the Hall of Fame announcement than it was to avoid a conflict with the Alabama-Texas national college championship game the following evening. Would it surprise you to learn that the Bowl Championship series is also a client of Ari Fleisher Sports Communications?

What is more intriguing was the choice of the forum selected for McGwire’s display of semi-contrition: not one of the broadcast networks, nor even a prominent cable sports channel like ESPN, but the MLB Network, a subsidiary of Major League Baseball. Even though MLB is available to a cable viewership barely half the size of ESPN’s, by breaking the non-story on MLB Fleischer was able not only to target what would have seemed a more sympathetic audience, but also to retain announcer approval in the form of the widely-trusted Bob Costas.

(The arrangement also apparently included a lengthy sit-down with Bernie Miklasz of the St Louis Post Dispatch, whose column was embargoed until after Costas’ “exclusive” interview had safely aired.)

In his three years as Bush’s Minister of Propaganda, Fleischer presided over the dissemination of information for the era’s two most tumultuous events, the September 11th attacks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. With respect to the former, he was charged with linking the terrorist attacks to Saddam Hussein (and was effective enough that many Americans believe it to this day), and even when he resigned some months after the commencement of hostilities with Baghdad, he was still on record insisting there was “no question” that Iraq was a repository of weapons of mass destruction. (We just hadn’t gotten around to, you know, finding them yet.)

The slogan expressed on the home page of the eponymous PR firm he subsequently founded – “We can help you handle the bad news and take advantage of the good” – promised that Fleischer would bring the same belligerent effectiveness to the field of sports consulting that he had to the warmongering business.

In apologising for the evasive answers he had given before a Congressional committee in March of 2005, McGwire said he had been acting on the advice of his attorneys. But this time around, it seemed clear he was willing to answer only what his spin doctor, Fleischer, had signed off on.

And while Big Mac’s admission has been accepted in some quarters as a self-cleansing acknowledgment of his transgressions, it was in many ways no more believable than his non-denial denial in Washington.

He claimed, for instance, that he had used steroids (and Human Growth Hormone) only to avoid repetitions of the numerous injuries that had put him on the disabled list seven times over five years in the early 1990s.

“I experienced a lot of injuries, including a rib-cage strain, torn left heel-muscle, a stress fracture of the left heel, and a torn right heel-muscle,” he told Costas. “It was definitely a miserable bunch of years, and I told myself that steroids would help me recover faster. I thought they would help me heal and prevent injuries, too.”

This process of healing coincided with the start of a four-season streak in which he hit 245 home runs, at a rate of one every eight at-bats. But McGwire refused to acknowledge the connection between the power surge and his experimentation with PEDs.

“There is no way that a pill or an injection will give you the hand-eye coordination you need to hit a baseball,” said McGwire. “There’s one thing I know: I was born to be a home run hitter.”

So even though he hit 70 of them in 1998, at the time more than any other man before him, he “honestly believes” it had nothing do do with the steroids he has admitted using at the time.

“I did not take steroids for strength purposes,” he said with what appeared to be a straight face.

Don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound much like a guy exorcising his inner demons to me. And don’t be fooled by the flood of tears that accompanied the supposedly heartfelt MLB interview. If we’ve learned nothing else from Mark McGwire over the years, it’s that he can so effectively cry on cue that he probably could have carved out a lucrative second career playing Pagliacci.

When the St Louis Cardinals report to spring training next month, McGwire will be back in uniform, having signed on as the hitting coach for his old team, and this lies at the heart of the Fleischer-arranged confessional. Since nobody believed his denials anyway, some sort of acknowledgment would probably have been necessary if he hoped to establish credibility with the young players with whom he will be working.

But the exercise was largely undertaken in the hope of clearing the dreaded subject from his 2010 agenda.

McGwire, who had to know the steroid issue was destined to come up each time the Cardinals hit a new city on their way around the National League this season, can now hope to deflect it by pointing to the MLB Network interview and claiming he has already answered those questions.

But he hasn’t, of course. Not even, and perhaps especially, in his own mind.