Move On!

If there is anything worse than a ballplayer who was juiced on steroids finally admitting his usage albeit in a qualified prepared "confession" it's the sanctimonious chorus of media hounds who wanted more blood in the water.

Mark McGwire's carefully prepared mea culpa before a national television audience (on MLB's channel, by the way, clearly an installed base far less than, say, that of ESPN) wasn't sufficient for a lot of folks who wanted a prostrate, guilt-wracked, shell of a man to plead for his future Hall of Fame votes. Forget it! He admitted using PED's though stopping short of saying they helped his power numbers and that's all he could be expected to do. Did these PED's help him to the temporary record he set for home runs in a single season? Probably. Will his long-term use of these substances prevent his entry to the HOF? Probably. Did he wreck the game? No more than a lot, a whole lot, of other players who were his contemporaries.

But here's the rub: the game wasn't wrecked. It has prevailed. Baseball has a lot of other problems, some of them much bigger, to solve. The people who clamor for truth and reconciliation commissions, many of whom looked the other way at the height of the steroid era, are the ones who need to search their souls now. In private.