12 January 2010

Mark McGwire is the former Major League Baseball player who was part of the  1998 run chase with Sammy Sosa to break Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. McGwire hit 70 to break the record that year, before Barry Bonds broke it with 73 in 2001; and both men’s achievements swirled in suspicions of drug abuse.

Now McGuire, about to start work as the hitting coach for his old team, the St Louis Cardinals, has finally admitted he took performance-enhancing steroids through his career. The New York Times carries a straight news item here, and a feature about the media campaign around McGwire’s admission here, and a statement from baseball commissioner Bud Selig here, where Selig claims that “the use of steroids and amphetamines amongst today’s players has greatly subsided and is virtually nonexistent”.

Elsewhere Kevin Kernan in the New York Post isn’t impressed by the mea culpa, while Bruce Owens at TMRZoo takes a not altogether serious look at the case.