|
|
 |
|
|||
MEMO TO: Myself
SUBJECT: Mark McGwire and Androstenedione (andro)
DATE: August 27, 1998
Regarding Big Mac and androstenedione--
...on KMOX radio, Hall-of-Fame sportscaster Jack Buck said it was a "non-story", and pledged not to talk about the Mark McGwire androstenedione controversy.
Ex-St. Louis Sports Online contributor Randy Karraker, ably working the KMOX mike alongside Buck, agreed.
|
|
| |
KTRS' Kevin Slaten pitched in with his own bombastic opinion, saying that the original AP account of the story, and the front page androstenedione follow-up by the Post-Dispatch, only confirmed his own view that print journalists, and sportswriters in particular, are the lowest form of life on this planet.
In essence, Slaten completely agreed with the stated Buck-Karraker on-air opinion, saying that the whole Mac-andro affair was a "non-story".
On KFNS AM-590, host Frank Cusumano expressed his view that "it's legal, and therefore I don't have a problem with it".
St. Louis media veteran Scott Simon, another former St. Louis Sports Online contributor who now plies his trade at Kansas City's CBS AM blowtorch, KMBZ, informed yours truly that the story was overblown...that he himself suffers from asthma, and the medication that he takes to control his condition renders him ineligible for the Olympics.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm thinking of the Jamaican bobsled team...Mr. Simon.)
Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz, a recent guest of the WINI Saturday Sports Review, chimed in with a rather balanced view of the McGwire andro connection, noting that (1) the Olympic ban of andro can't be taken too seriously in light of the IOC's banning of various over-the-counter medications (such as Sudafed); and (2) the NBA ban of andro is ridiculous, too, since pot is not on the league's list of banned substances.
But Miklasz covered all bases by espousing the view that androstenedione is legal, considered to be a nutritional supplement, and not banned by baseball's establishment.
In other words, it's OK to take andro because it's not against the rules to do so.
KFNS' Brian Stull, yet another former St. Louis Sports Online contributor, noted that the current media attention to Mac's andro usage is, in his view, overblown, since Stull claims that McGwire openly discussed his use of supplements on at least two occasions in the weeks prior to the AP "scoop".
And in their initial comments on the McGwire story, which were apparently based on early media accounts of the controversy, St. Louis Sports Online columnist (and WGNU sportscaster) Mike Huss, and St. Louis Sports Online photographer Eric Niederhoffer both leaned toward the view that the story was overblown...and that a possible driving force for the story was the media's incessant desire to tear down the heroes that they themselves elevate.
So, despite all those opinions, all which sound logical in one way or another...
why does McGwire's use of andro give me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach?
I don't know.
Well, maybe I do.
Maybe it's because all of Mac's defenders sound, to my ears, a lot like President Clinton's defenders.
Literally straining to defend their man.
Parsing their words.
And sounding like lawyers.
The Clinton defenders...and the McGwire defenders...their statements sound OK...they just don't sound right.
Complicating issues include the fact that yours truly voted for Clinton.
Twice.
And McGwire's mammoth home runs have lit up summer for this particular sports consumer like no other recent time in sports.
But one thing seems certain.
In the 1998 baseball season, there is almost nothing connected with Mark McGwire that can be referred to as a non-story.
And the McGwire-androstenedione connection is, in fact, a huge story.
And, to this observer, it seems wrong to blame the media for publishing a story that, in more than one aspect, defines sports in the '90s.
We haven't heard the last of Big Mac and androstenedione.
It does seem unfortunate, though, that in this one-in-a-lifetime baseball season, that Mark McGwire's historic chase has been tarnished.
One more thing, though.
Recall that longtime St. Louis baseball observers--guys like Bob Broeg, Red Schoendienst, George Kissell, and the aforementioned Buck (that's about two centuries worth of baseball there, folks)--all grin and utter more or less the same line, when asked about McGwire.
"I've never seen anything like him."
|
||||||||||
