Doping & Drugs ·
Seventy Home Runs, and a Later Admission
In 2010, Mark McGwire acknowledged using steroids during his record-setting 1998 season. He apologized and said he had not taken them for strength.
On September 27, 1998, Mark McGwire hit two home runs against Montreal, bringing his season total for the St. Louis Cardinals to 70. He had surpassed Roger Maris’s single-season mark of 61, set in 1961, by nine. On January 11, 2010, as he prepared to return to the Cardinals as hitting coach, McGwire issued a statement admitting that he had used steroids during that season. “I used them on occasion throughout the ’90s, including during the 1998 season,” he said.
The 70 home runs came during a race with Sammy Sosa, who finished with 66. On September 25, McGwire hit his 66th just 45 minutes after Sosa reached the same total. McGwire then hit two home runs on each of the next two days. His total stood as the major-league record until Barry Bonds hit 73 in 2001, the year McGwire retired.
Questions about steroid use followed McGwire into a congressional hearing on March 17, 2005. Before the House Government Reform Committee, he repeatedly said he was “not here to talk about the past.” Asked whether he could assure fans that he had played with honesty and integrity, he declined to discuss his playing history. “My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family and myself,” he told the committee.
Nearly five years later, the Cardinals’ decision to hire him as hitting coach brought those questions back. The team had said he would address them before spring training. In his January statement, McGwire described his return as a chance to speak about what he had left unanswered. “It’s time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected,” he said.
McGwire said he had first tried steroids briefly during the 1989–90 offseason and resumed using them after an injury in 1993. He said injuries and a desire to return to the field led him to use them, noting that he had missed 228 games over five years in the mid-1990s. “I told myself that steroids could help me recover faster,” he said. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, he said he had not used them for strength: “I did this for health purposes. There’s no way I did this for any type of strength use.”
Before releasing the admission, McGwire called commissioner Bud Selig, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and Maris’s widow, Pat. He also told his son, Matt, whom he had hoisted at home plate after the record home run in 1998. His voice shook as he described that conversation to the AP, and he called it the toughest part of telling people. La Russa publicly praised his willingness to admit mistakes and express regret.
McGwire acknowledged the question his admission raised about the 70 home runs. “I’m sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids,” he said. He pointed to good and bad seasons both with and without the drugs, without resolving what his total would have been without them. “But no matter what, I shouldn’t have done it and for that I’m truly sorry.”