Shocker! McGwire 'roided up!

Somebody apparently convinced Mark McGwire that he can't just waltz into training camp next month as the Cardinals new hitting coach and expect that nobody's gonna ask him about steroids.

So Monday afternoon he issued a statement confessing to a decade of steroid use but insisting that the steroids didn't affect his play.

The statement is essentially cattle excrement from the very first sentence:

Now that I have become the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, I have the chance to do something that I wish I was able to do five years ago.

Nobody, when he told that congressional committee he wasn't there to talk about the past, was stopping him from instead saying: Yeah, I used. It wasn't banned, there were plenty of others using, it was accepted in clubhouse culture. You may not like knowing it, but you sure enjoyed all those home runs, didn't you? You got what you wanted, I got what I wanted.

He didn't say it then. He won't say it now. But it's a lot closer to truth than what he said in the past and what he said today.

Here's some more organic fertilizer:

Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.

If we are to take his current version to be accurate — a big if, considering how long it's taken for him to come off his claims of innocence — he only used to recover from injury. If that's the case, had he NOT played in the steroid era, he wouldn't be significant enough for us to notice today.

I see two ways to view McGwire:

1. He tainted the game as badly as has been done since the days of the game fixers in the 1910s — in which case he shouldn't be back in uniform.
2. His steroid use was regarded as acceptable at the time and isn't now — in which case he hardly needs a weepy apology.

I'm inclined to the latter. I want a little less weeping and a little more honesty.

What we got today is McGwire saying he shouldn't have done what he did but what he did didn't make any difference.

Which makes no sense at all.

A piece of the Acta, and other odds and ends

It's good to see a long-suffering team like the Yankees finally reach the World Series.

Surrre it is.

* The Cleveland Indians, with a choice of a win-now manager from the outside (Bobby Valentine) and a veteran of their farm system to supervise a rebuilding project (Torey Lovullo), split the difference to hire Manny Acta.

Acta (above) is a more sensible choice than Valentine, who told the Cleveland media after his interview that he and the Tribe may not be a good fit. But the reality for the Indians is that they are rebuilding and they're going to take their lumps in 2010. Lovullo would have made more sense.

Of course, it's possible that general manager Mark Shapiro doesn't have enough security to write off 2010 — in which case he'll make more, and worse, mistakes in the offseason that's just beginning.

* The current issue of Baseball America names Joe Mauer its Major League Player of the Year. Mauer is the first player to be BA's High School Player of the year, Minor League Player of the Year, and Major League Player of the Year.

*Tony LaRussa will return as St. Louis manager. Just as important: pitching coach Dave Duncan, who was vocally on the outs with the front office during the season, will return also. Less important, but certain to make headlines: Mark McGwire will be the hitting coach.

LaRussa was, at best, a passive encourager of the rise of steroids in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. Even after the backlash, he vocally sought to bring Barry Bonds to the Cardinals and defended Rick Ankiel's use of human growth hormone. And now he's trying to rehabilitate McGwire's image.

Good luck with that.