The ABC's: Athletic Brain Cramps

You must have heard by now. Former Home Run King and Incredible Hulk look-a-like Mark McGwire just admitted that he took steroids. In related news, The Hills cast members Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have admitted that aspects of the reality show were, in fact, staged by MTV.

You'd be hard-pressed to find one person in the world that was surprised by McGwire's steriod use. The only thing that may have shocked some people was the way in which he admitted it.

I had high hopes for McGwire -- I really did. I thought he was going to be the first athlete to give a true apology rather than an explanation about how outside factors somehow forced him to inject himself with HGH. Instead, we got this:



Yeah, yeah. We don't know the pressure. We don't know what it's like being injured and not being able to perform. We know you have a swing that was built for home runs. We've heard it all before, Mark.

I'm sick of the excuses. I want to see an apology that actually gets at the heart of why athletes cheat. I guess I'll just write one. Here we go:

I have called this press conference to announce the fact that I took steroids from 1994-2001. Actually it was more like 1986-2001. But then I also dabbled a bit in college. Sorry, I'm getting off topic.

The reason I took steroids was so that I could hit dingers. Lots of dingers. With great frequency. I'm not sure if you're aware, but there is a very complicated corollary that exists in Major League Baseball. It goes a little something like this: more dingers = more money.

Once I realized that this was how the game worked, I devoted my time solely to hitting home runs. I realized that singles were meaningless when it comes to making a living, so why not hit .250 with 45 home runs instead of .300 with 30 home runs? I mean, it's not rocket science. Besides, without steroids I couldn't hit .300 if I tried.

Lots of people I knew were openly taking steroids, and I saw my buddy Jose Canseco growing to the size of a Yeti, so I jumped on board. I knew I was cheating but I simply didn't care. I wanted to do whatever I could to hit more home runs.

1998 was the greatest year of my life. I don't think you can comprehend how it feels to have an entire country rooting for you. When I hit my 62nd home run, there was no semblance of remorse in me. I was on top of the world and I had been doing steroids for so long that I had pretty much forgotten they were illegal. Just another part of my routine.

I do not regret taking steroids. I only regret that Barry Bonds, a better hitter than me, decided to use them too.

Without steroids I would have been Rob Deer. Do you guys remember Rob Deer? That's what I thought. Now I have my name in all sorts of record books and it's there to stay because everyone I played with was on steroids too. You will all forget this by my last Hall of Fame eligibility year, and then I'll get in.

I cheated and it woked. Get over it.