McGwire Faces History Like a Fidgety Mafia Don

This is the price of all those home runs:

A hero shamed, diminished not just in size, but in stature, reduced to answering questions from Congress like some fidgety Mafia don -- and the game he once dominated unable to crawl out from even that shrunken shadow.

“I’m not going to talk about the past,” Mark McGwire replied on at least eight separate occasions, usually when asked about some of the most revered accomplishments in a game that’s held the nation in its thrall for more than 130 years.

Though only five players and a handful of MLB executives appeared before the House Government Reform Committee, make no mistake. All of baseball -- even Barry Bonds, made all the more notable by his absence -- was called on the carpet.

Only one man, however, owned up.

“The most effective thing right now,” former MVP and best-selling author Jose Canseco said, “is we’ve got to admit to certain things we’ve done. What I’m hearing is that I’m the only person in the major leagues who used steroids.”

The hearings began with former star pitcher and current Sen. Jim Bunning saying, “maybe I’m old fashioned. I remember when players didn’t get better as they got older. We all got worse.” The day continued with the anguished stories of two families who lost sons to suicide because those kids believed the advice from coaches and scouts “to get bigger” meant by any means necessary, including the reckless use of steroids.

Then a few of those players who got bigger and better as they got older took the stage, and except for the disgraced -- but still not discredited -- Canseco, washed their hands of any responsibility. The voices of McGwire and Canseco cracked when discussing the fates that befell young ballplayers Rob Garibaldi and Taylor Hooton. But it wasn’t long before all of those who testified -- again, with the exception of Canseco -- began repeating what has become baseball’s mantra whenever questions about performance-enhancers arise.

“I,” said Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who on Thursday backed off some of his most strident criticism of steroid users, “am not going to dwell on the past.”

That was essentially McGwire’s answer to whether he considered the use of steroids “cheating.”

And to the question of whether his magical 1998 home-run race with Sammy Sosa -- the one commissioner Bud Selig credits with sparking the renaissance of baseball after a crippling strike four years earlier -- was played “with honor and integrity.”

And to the question of whether he ever used any performance-enhancers beyond the steroid precursor androstenedione, which an Associated Press writer noticed sitting on the top shelf of his locker in 1998.

And even to the question of whether all the home-run records of recent years should be wiped off the books.

“I’m not here,” McGwire kept answering, “to go into my past.”

None of the other players save Canseco were any more forthcoming. They saw no steroid use in the clubhouse, rarely discussed it, and never learned enough about any potential abusers to make confronting them worthwhile.

“It was as acceptable in the late ‘80s and the mid-90s as a cup of coffee,” Canseco said.

Anybody who doubts that now should have spent a few hours in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Rep. Henry Waxman recalled that he and Selig, then the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, were likely the only two people in the room who could recall Congress’ first investigation of what was called baseball’s “alarming” drug problem in 1973. He then reeled off a litany of failed chances that baseball failed to capitalize on ever since.

Fans in Boston chanting “steroids, steroids” when Canseco stepped to the plate at Fenway in 1988; former commissioner Fay Vincent’s unilateral policy banning, among other drugs, steroids; a string of news reports; McGwire’s andro admission; the arrest of a ballplayer with steroids in his car; and more.

“But as we know now from 30 years of history,” Waxman said, “baseball failed to regulate itself.”

The game’s new drug policy, itself a product of pressure brought to bear in a previous congressional hearing chaired by Sen. John McCain, is full of loopholes. There are no tests for human growth hormones and amphetamines are not banned. But none of this apparently bothers fans -- attendance is up across the board -- and it hasn’t cost baseball its special place in America’s sporting life. Yet.

Not so with McGwire.

The redhead whose lightning swing and 20-inch arms captivated us all shuffled out of the room at the end of the day, his accomplishments now as deflated as his once Bunyanesque frame. A few minutes earlier, a congressman had asked McGwire what message he had for the half-million kids that medical experts believe have tried steroids trying to be just like him.

Just this once, McGwire didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Steroids are wrong,” he said. “Do not take them. They give you nothing but false hope.”