McGwire confirms what we all suspected

It's official, baseball's renaissance was a fraud.

Mark McGwire's admission of steroid use should come as no surprise to anyone, but it is nonetheless one of the darkest moments in the history of baseball.

I was nine years old in the summer of 1998. It was during that time period that sports grew from a passing interest of mine to a passion. John Elway had just won his first Super Bowl, Michael Jordan had just won his sixth ring. and the Colorado Avalanche were perennial Stanley Cup contenders. It was in April of 1998 that I went to my first (and unfortunately, to this date, only) Major League Baseball game as the Colorado Rockies led by reigning National League MVP Larry Walker were blown out by Chipper Jones and the Atlanta Braves, 11-4. It was in the summer of 1998 that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa made history. It was a great time to be a baseball fan.

While I knew cheating was an integral part of the game - corked bats, spitballs, etc. - but I was naive about steroid use. In hindsight, it seems most fans were. It's not that we condoned cheating, it's just that we wanted so badly for what we saw to be legitimate.

Forget it ever happened.

If only it were that easy. How can we just forget the graphics that appeared every day on the sports pages of newspapers across the country tracking the blistering pace set by McGwire and Sammy Sosa - and Ken Griffey Jr., who likely would have also surpassed Maris had he not been slowed by injury? How can we just forget the sight of Sosa meeting McGwire at home plate to congratulate him on number 62? How can we forget the image of McGwire embracing his son as the nation lauded him for making history?

History built on a lie.

So where does that leave us?

McGwire's statement to Bob Costas that he started around the 1994 season is consistent with his numbers as he hit only nine homers each in 1993 and 1994 due to injury shortened seasons. Then from 1995-1999, he hit 39, 52, 58, 70 and 65.

If we give him everything up to and including 1994 as legitimate (which may be a bit charitable), that leaves him with 238 legitimate home runs and 345 steroid assisted.

In short, it leaves him nowhere near the Hall of Fame. It leaves us with four of the top 15 home run hitters of all-time confirmed PED users (Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro and Manny Ramirez being the others) and two more (Sosa and Barry Bonds) suspected.

It leaves the commissioner's office and the player's union with questions to answer. How could they not have known? If they did know, did they willingly put profits and ticket sales ahead of the health of their players? What was real and what wasn't in baseball from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s?

In the end, only three people come out of this mess looking good: single season home run king Roger Maris, all-time home run king Hank Aaron and the real home run champion of 1998 - with 59 in that season - the greatest player of his generation, Ken Griffey Jr.