McGwire faces likely shutout

Steroid Cloud Spoils Hall Of Fame Shot

By Mark Emmons
The Mercury News
January 7, 2007

PHOTO: MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES

No matter how much he doesn't want to talk about it, the past is about to catch up with Mark McGwire.

This year's Baseball Hall of Fame selections will be announced Tuesday, and Big Mac's name is not expected to be among them.

Such a snub would have been unthinkable five years ago, when he retired. McGwire's reputation still glowed from the magical summer of 1998, when he and Sammy Sosa made baseball fun again with their assault on the home run record.

But McGwire has since endured a stunning fall from grace.

His defining image now is not a mammoth home run but his sad appearance before a congressional hearing where he dodged questions about steroid use with the repetitive lament: “I'm not here to talk about the past.”

That's why McGwire, the former Oakland A's star, probably won't get the 75 percent of votes required for entry into the Hall. The Associated Press surveyed 125 of the 575 members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America eligible to cast ballots, and only one in four said they planned to vote for McGwire.

Is this how it always will be for McGwire? Ostracized and doubted? Maintaining, by all accounts, a reclusive lifestyle in Orange County?

Crisis management experts say McGwire can reinvent himself. But it won't be easy and McGwire must, in effect, come out of hiding.

“The only way you can repair a reputation is with truth,” said Mike Paul, the president of New York-based MGP & Associates PR. “He has to say, `I've made some mistakes.' He needs to become the poster boy for this issue. He doesn't have a shot at regaining his reputation unless he spends the rest of his life embracing it.”

While Eric Dezenhall agrees that McGwire can rehabilitate his image, he wonders whether the slugger can do anything that will get him into Cooperstown.

“Baseball history is basically statistics,” said Dezenhall, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Dezenhall Resources. “His statistics are tainted. The idea that he can un-taint them with some public relations gesture is nonsense. There will always be an asterisk.”

Paul Bunyan with a bat

But with McGwire in self-imposed exile, it's not clear whether he sees himself as an outcast -- or if he even cares what anyone thinks.

Tuesday's announcement will be the first referendum on the so-called Steroid Era, when statistics and muscles were inflated. Writers are passing judgment on a man once seen as baseball's savior.

Home run mania swept the nation in 1998. That also was a summer filled with non-stop coverage of President Clinton's affair with an intern, and McGwire was a welcome diversion from the scandal.

He was Paul Bunyan with a bat. Playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, he belted 70 home runs, eclipsing Roger Maris' season record of 61. He endeared himself by sharing the moment with his young son and the Maris family. McGwire and Sosa were named Sports Illustrated's athletes of the year for helping heal wounds from the divisive 1994 baseball strike.

There were hints of the trouble to come. It was revealed that McGwire used androstenedione -- an over-the-counter prohormone that acts like testosterone. Although allowed by baseball at the time, it was banned by the International Olympic Committee.

But no one seemed to care. They loved Big Mac. And to quote a TV commercial of the era: “Chicks dig the long ball.”

McGwire played three more seasons before retiring in 2001, even though he hit 29 home runs in 97 games that year. A reticent figure uncomfortable in the spotlight, McGwire seemed ready to move on. His 583 home runs appeared to make him a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame.

In hindsight, though, some wonder if he was leaving before serious questions could be raised.

“He ducked out early, when most people seem to think that he could have played for another season or two,” Paul said.

Controversy arises

The scope of steroids in sport became more apparent after McGwire's departure.

The late San Jose native Ken Caminiti claimed in 2002 that half of baseball was using performance-enhancers. A year later, the Balco Laboratories scandal broke. Victor Conte Jr. allegedly provided steroids to a host of athletes -- including the Giants' Barry Bonds, whose 73 homers in 2001 broke McGwire's mark.

In a tell-all book, Jose Canseco wrote that he and McGwire had used steroids together as members of the A's.

Then on March 17, 2005, Canseco, Sosa, McGwire and other ballplayers were summoned to appear before the House Committee on Government Reform investigating steroid use in sports. With Canseco sitting at the same table, a shaken McGwire stonewalled the legislators.

McGwire had never failed a drug test -- baseball didn't test while he played. But he declined to say he never took steroids.

His silence was deafening.

“Taking the Fifth Amendment is what mobsters do,” Dezenhall said. “We don't expect that from heroes.”

Paul had another client -- he declines to say who -- sitting in front of the committee that day. (“I told my athlete that `if you tell a lie here, it's going to come back and bite you for the rest of your life.'”)

Paul said he believes McGwire has been focused on short-term legal fears and not on how he will be remembered.

Image revival possible

Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at the firm Weber Shandwick, pointed out a long list of figures who rebuilt tarnished reputations: Martha Stewart. Michael Milken. Donald Trump. Jimmy Carter. Clinton.

“They all actively worked at recovering their reputations,” Gaines-Ross said. “They just didn't stand by. You have to be proactive, and he hasn't been. He needs to speak up. He isn't providing any side to his story, and that's the problem.”

She also believes that the public, on the whole, is forgiving of people who come clean.

“It's very much expected that you apologize,” she added. “Everyone does, even to the extent that apologies today no longer mean what they used to.”

Dezenhall agreed, adding that it's a “myth” that an apology by itself leads to forgiveness. He said McGwire, through good works, can show he is a sincere person of good character.

“But you can't un-ring a bell,” he said. “When Michael Milken's obituary is written, he will be noted as a convicted felon who did good things to redeem himself. You can't get around the first part.”

By disappearing from public view, McGwire might be hoping the controversy fades, Dezenhall added. Gaines-Ross said that with his silence, McGwire might be signaling that he is at peace with himself and a place in baseball history that doesn't include Cooperstown. McGwire probably will be eligible to be on the ballot for 15 years, and after that, could be elected by a committee of his peers.

But it seems the Steroid Era will forever be linked to McGwire.

“That pact with the devil he made has come back to roost,” Paul said. “But he can make a new pact with truth. The average person in America will commend him for having the strength to do the right thing.”