I would have loved to have seen him do it a long time ago, but since he did it, I think that he himself will tell you right now he’s able to sleep at night and he’s able to look at his teammates. He’s done everything that he can do.
McGwire said that he had two other job offers, one from the Seattle Mariners and another from the Colorado Rockies, but he eventually took the Cardinals’ job because his wife, Stephanie, is from the St. Louis area.
dontsprainyourvagina asked: What are your feelings on a career .263 hitter who averaged nearly 100 strikeouts a year as you hitting coach? Is this going to be a case of those who can't do teach or will it work?
Good question. You can’t deny the numbers, but I am comforted that McGwire has been working as a private coach ever since he left the game. Maybe I’m naive in trusting that Tony has done what is best for the club, but I think (hope) this will work.
Personal note: As a musician, I was always a better teacher than I was a player and I got that from having a great teacher. I could sit and watch someone play and make the tiniest tweak in technique that could entirely change them for the better. Finding that little movement that they never realized they were doing can make a world of difference.
I feel like a hitting coach is similar. Getting people to think differently about their technique and see it in a different way is key and I think McGwire can bring that level of analysis to the team. And McGwire has worked with Tony for how long now? He’s had the experience of having a great teacher, let’s hope he’s picked up on some of that.
During the workout Sunday, on the eve of his confession, McGwire said nothing as he hit outdoors with Ryan and Schumaker and hit 10 consecutive balls over the outfield fence. He said he could always separate off-field concerns from on-field performance. But now there’s no baggage at the ballpark. No distractions. A coach, unencumbered.
Cardinals hitting coach Mark McGwire (left) works with infielder Brendan Ryan during a training session at a local baseball practice facility in Huntington Beach, Calif.
I have no problem with this. And I have no problem with a ‘stacheless Brendan Ryan.
I don’t know Lynn Zinser, but she has kind of pissed me off the last couple of days.
Yesterday’s post was gross enough stating that McGwire’s “confession” was “parsed”. (Yay for unnecessary quotation marks!) Yes, many people are unsatisfied for whatever reason with McGwire’s statement and Lynn happily links to all of them. (I guess that’s the point of ‘Leading Off’?) Even the writers that “actually like him” and “wish they felt differently”.
And then there is today’s post which I thought was going to be about Lane Kiffen and the insanity that took place last night on the campus of the University of Tennessee, but Lynn decided to throw in this comparison:
The whole episode had all the surprise completely missing in the Mark McGwire semiadmission of steroid use, whose latest nonshocking development is his former teammate Jose Canseco’s announcing that McGwire is still lying about the extent of his steroid habit.
Is she saying that we should have acted more surprised with McGwire’s statement or that we should have been more outraged? Or surprised that he didn’t show us the exact points of injection and his personal log of every time he stuck a needle in his ass? Should we all have gone to his personal home and lit things on fire, rioted in the streets? Over steroids? Because that’s what she just said.
I’m still unsure of what people want from McGwire at this point. I have more understanding for people that say he should never be in the Hall of Fame. Ok. I get that. Asterisks are already going in the record books, Mark personally called the family of Roger Maris. He’s apologized to everyone who has ever watched a baseball game. The man doesn’t even want to play. He wants to coach. Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez, the savior of New York, is still collecting a paycheck and celebrating World Series victories after his admission. Let’s look at some of Lynn’s quotes about him.
“Someday our kids may be pledging allegiance to him before school starts or he could become the face on the $100 bill.” - Nov 3, 2009
Hmm. Well she actually doesn’t say a lot about him, but she did a post titled ‘A Year of Sad Lessons’ about everything awful that happened in sports this year… surely he’ll have a few mentions in that.
It seems for every Kobe Bryant winning an emotional championship and still sinking dramatic game-winning shots to make even some regular N.B.A. season games watchable there is an Alex Rodriguez, whose championship year also included being outed for steroid use, and the whole sordid, depressing tale of McNair’s demise. - Dec. 18, 2009
So… he’s mentioned in a sentence about the NBA… and Kobe Bryant. And that’s it. Really in all the articles where she has ever mentioned “Alex Rodriguez” there isn’t really much negativity. A little bit of humor around his rise to fame, a little bit of “oh, and that steroid thing that happened”. But nothing much beyond that. Hmm, wonder why NYTimes Editor? I wonder why?
And to the people that actually like Mark McGwire but can’t seem to deal with his statements this week - I don’t buy it. I think you want someone to blame for starting the so-called steroid era and you’ve found your man. You’re going to blame him for Roger Clemens, for A-Rod, for everyone else’s name who has surfaced on the Mitchell Report when in all reality no one person is solely responsible for the way baseball has been played.
There are two wars going on. The economy is staggering around like a BC sophomore outside Mary Ann’s on St. Patrick’s Day. The country is trying to reform a health-care “system” that is killing people out of sheer neglect, and this is what gets Williams — whose outrage meter seems, well, erratic — chewing on his own liver?
When Mark McGwire finished with his day of apologies, I forgave him. It doesn’t mean I look at his 70-home run season the way I did in 1998. It doesn’t mean that I respect the choices he made. It doesn’t even mean that I agree with his self-scouting report. No. I just mean that if there was any anger or resentment toward him for cheating, it is gone now. He admitted and he apologized. Now, he wants to coach baseball. He wants to speak out against steroids. He wants people to remember that he was a damned good hitter who worked hard at the game. I wish him well and hope all those things for him.
Mark McGwire finally came clean Monday, admitting he used steroids when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998. McGwire said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that he used steroids on and off for nearly a decade.
“I wish I had never touched steroids,” McGwire said in a statement. “It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”
McGwire also used human growth hormone, a person close to McGwire said, speaking on condition of anonymity because McGwire didn’t include that detail in his statement.
Are we done talking about it now? Everyone cool?
