{"id":923,"date":"2009-01-17T07:56:30","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T14:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/17\/mark-mcgwire-how-do-we-talk-about-the-past\/"},"modified":"2009-03-18T20:18:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-19T03:18:27","slug":"mark-mcgwire-how-do-we-talk-about-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/17\/mark-mcgwire-how-do-we-talk-about-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark McGwire: How Do We Talk About the Past?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark McGwire did not make the Hall of Fame, and did not come here to talk about the past.\u00c2\u00a0 Should we?<\/em><\/p>\n

When I arrived in St. Louis to attend college in 2001, Mark McGwire had reached the end of the line.\u00c2\u00a0 Hobbled by an uncertain back and balky knees, McGwire played in just 97 games over the course of 2001.\u00c2\u00a0 The year before, he had only appeared in 89 games.\u00c2\u00a0 Our single season homerun king, who had become as necessary as oxygen to us in the summer of 1998, had been relegated to the spot start and a pinch hitter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role.\u00c2\u00a0 However, his presence still permeated Busch Stadium.\u00c2\u00a0 Big Mac Land, a section of seats deep in the left field bleachers, where many of his titanic blasts used to land, remained a happy and honored landmark.\u00c2\u00a0 When he stepped into the batter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s box, no matter how rare an occasion it became, an energy unlike any I had felt ran through the baseball-watching populace.\u00c2\u00a0 Here was our hero.\u00c2\u00a0 Three years earlier, this top heavy, gentle giant of a man had become a modern day Aeneas.\u00c2\u00a0 He had thrown the withering and aging game of baseball on his back and dragged it from the wreckage of Troy.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter that at age 37, he now struggled mightily and was a mere fraction of the hitter we remembered.\u00c2\u00a0 Every time McGwire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bat traveled along its customary path from right shoulder to left, we flashed back to 1998.\u00c2\u00a0 We pictured that low line drive just clearing the left field fence in early September; that jubilant man almost missing first base as he began his 62nd trip around the bases that season; his son being lifted high in the air in celebration; the fist pounds; the fireworks; the hugs.\u00c2\u00a0 In that batter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s box, he became Paul Bunyan, a modern American Legend.\u00c2\u00a0 We loved him.\u00c2\u00a0 We thanked him.\u00c2\u00a0 We respected him.<\/p>\n

Eight years later, McGwire and his 583 career homeruns have been prohibited from Cooperstown\u00c2\u00a0 for the second straight year.\u00c2\u00a0 His record shattering season of 70 homers, followed by 65 in 1999, languish in baseball limbo.\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily think the voters are wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Like it or not, McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmeiro\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto a lesser extent\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwill be held accountable for the steroid era.\u00c2\u00a0 By now, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all seen the footage: Palmeiro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defiant finger wagging at congress, Sosa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loss of facility with the English language, and McGwire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desire to not talk about the past.\u00c2\u00a0 But in baseball, more than any other sport, the past is always present.\u00c2\u00a0 The traditions of our bygone years make up the game we know today.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether we talk about a rotund and bombastic young man capturing the imagination of the nation; an immigrant and fisherman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s son becoming one of the greatest hitters of all time; or a well-educated, soft spoken, lion-hearted black man opening the eyes of white America; history holds a central position in baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why the word Cooperstown has become a venerated concoction of syllables.\u00c2\u00a0 The mere mention of the town evokes a cocktail of wistful longing and unrestrained enthusiasm in old men and young boys alike.\u00c2\u00a0 Without our history, where would our game be?<\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the ultimate conundrum of the steroid era.\u00c2\u00a0 In the years between 1996 and 2006, players accomplished feats that we never thought could be achieved.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet, contrary to all our years of customarily raising up our heroes, we cannot honor these exploits or the people that performed them.\u00c2\u00a0 To do so would be an acknowledgement of cheating, an admission of guilt that baseball, a game once undeniably stitched to the fabric of American life, had drifted so far from its tether to our culture that it no longer recognized the drug trafficking laws of the United States.<\/p>\n

McGwire didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make the Hall of Fame for a second straight year, garnering only 22% of the vote.\u00c2\u00a0 Though the image of one of his monstrous homeruns sailing into the deepest recess of the night stirred my heart, my head would not allow me to vote for him in the Seamheads HOF Poll<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 McGwire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name did not appear on my virtual ballot, not because I consider him a villain that must be shunned from the annals of history, but because his actions have made me doubt my memories.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, when I look back on the glee and the pure joy of September 8, 1998, uncertainty creeps into my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 How do I react to this knowing what I now know?\u00c2\u00a0 Time has not been kind to the career of Mark McGwire.<\/p>\n

President Ford pardoned Nixon.\u00c2\u00a0 McGwire will eventually make the Hall of Fame.\u00c2\u00a0 He has to.\u00c2\u00a0 The Hall of Fame celebrates the history of baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 At its most basic level, history is a story.\u00c2\u00a0 How do you tell the story of baseball without the Homerun Chase of \u00e2\u20ac\u212298?\u00c2\u00a0 However, it will be quite some time before that plaque hangs on the walls of greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 Before that happens, we need to come to terms with the fact that there will always be ambiguity and insecurity when we look back on this era of baseball history.\u00c2\u00a0 That type of compromise takes time.\u00c2\u00a0 Right now, though it goes against the very fibers of our baseball loving souls, we should not talk about the past, but stride hopefully into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark McGwire did not make the Hall of Fame, and did not come here to talk about the past.\u00c2\u00a0 Should we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}