Pathetic performance by McGwire The Liar

His admission - years and years and years later - that he took steroids and HGH for years and years and years was about one thing and one thing only. As he admitted to Bob Costas on the MLB Network:

"I'm doing this for me, to get this off my chest."

What a selfish jerk.

Pulling an Andy Pettitte, McGwire also claimed he juiced primarily to overcome injuries. "I did not take this for any strength purposes at all," he told Costas.

Then he added: "I took very, very low dosages."

I kept waiting for him to say he didn't inhale.

Why should we believe a word this man says? Because he's been so honorable over the years?

Is this admission supposed to make Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and other truly great players from the past - not to mention Roger Maris' family - give McGwire a pat on his back for breaking their records and joining them on the all-time home run lists?

With a straight face, McGwire told Costas he still would have hit 245 HRs from 1996-99 - a four-year period in which he hit 42 percent of his 583 career homers - even if he hadn't been Mr. Syringe at the time.

Feel free to stop laughing anytime.

Maybe we were stupid and naive enough to buy this crud in the 1990s, but we've gotten a lot smarter. A lot more cynical, too.

If, by his own admission, McGwire needed the 'roids to stay on the field and to deal with the pressure of performing, he obviously wouldn't have come close to hitting all of those home runs without the drugs.

That's just logic. That's just common sense. That's just adding 1 + 1 and coming up with 2. McGwire wants us to come up with 583. Not gonna happen.

In the end, his tearful confession - to something 99.9999 percent of the world already knew was true - was little but self-serving drivel. It was something he knew he had to do before he begins his new career teaching Cardinals hitters how to take HGH without getting caught hit big-league curveballs.

Sympathetic? Hardly.

Pathetic is more like it.

The Balder Truth

This is not tsk-tsking McGwire's decision to take steroids.

For one thing, fans have proven with their wallets over and over and over again that they don't care who took steroids when, so why should I?

When McGwire is introduced before his first game at Busch Stadium this spring, the self-professed best and smartest baseball fans in the galaxy will give him an ovation so loud the Arch might collapse from the aftershock.

For another thing, can you honestly say you wouldn't have taken steroids to save your career knowing that a huge percentage of your peers were taking them? I'd love to be so noble, but I can't sit here today and say I absolutely wouldn't have juiced in the exact same scenario.

No, this tsk-tsking is about the bald-face lies. And the denials. And the silence. And the message he was sending kids. And the way he let down all those who blindly supported him because, well, because a class act like Mark McGwire wouldn't lie about such a thing, right?

Long after he was done playing, he let his apologists continue to proclaim his innocence while he hid in a bunker (mostly, with his sand wedge).

McGwire made dupes of Tony La Russa, his teammates, millions of fans in St. Louis and beyond, Bud Selig, fawning media types ... everybody who stuck up so vociferously for McGwire despite a mountain of evidence against him.

"Oh, you say he took steroids," his enablers would say, "but you don't really have proof, do you?"

The cheating McGwire did on baseball by taking steroids pales in comparison to the cheating he did on those who supported him.

McGwire the home-run hitter was a sham, sure. An even bigger sham: McGwire the man.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

McGwire stole the headlines on an unusually busy sports Monday. Here's a six-pack of other notable news:

1. Already a two-time NFL coaching failure, Pete Carroll says it's the challenge that takes him to Seattle for another try. I guess it's just a coincidence that he's leaving USC just as his program fell from the top of the Pac-10 and just as the NCAA appears poised to drop the hammer on the school for alleged recruiting violations under his watch.

2. Supposedly, the Cubs have told Andre Dawson they will retire his No. 8 only if he is wearing a Cubbie cap on his Hall of Fame bust. Really? The Hawk isn't worthy of the honor if the Hall decides Dawson must go in as an Expo, for whom he played 11 years vs. 6 in Chicago? If true, it's a pretty sad commentary on the Cubs.

3. Greg Maddux has returned to the Cubs as assistant GM under Jim Hendry. Our sleuths are still trying to confirm rumors that Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Matt Clement and Carlos Zambrano also will be assistant GMs, thereby guaranteeing the 2004 championship all over again.

4. If the Packers don't intend to promote Tom Clements, give their QB coach a hefty raise or both, they shouldn't have denied the Bears' request to interview Clements for Chicago's offensive coordinator job. Petty differences between organizations shouldn't stop a person from bettering himself as a professional.

5. Rough week for Jerry Wainwright, the Droopy Dog look-alike who was fired as DePaul coach just a few days after suffering a broken leg during a sideline collision. Wainwright didn't win enough and therefore had to go, but he's a class act who will be heard from again, either as a big-time program's top assistant or as a head coach at a school from a smaller conference.

6. According to U.S. Department of Education figures, Marquette spent $10.3 million on its basketball program last year - nearly $2 million more than any other Big East school. Jeesh. I think it's time for me to to start charging my alma mater on a per-cheer basis.