Wednesday, former Red Sox and White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk did the deed. Thursday, it was former pitcher Ferguson Jenkins — who spent 19 seasons in the majors with the Cubs, Rangers, Phillies and Red Sox — who gave the Cardinals’ new hitting coach a verbal flogging.
The big right-hander, who went 284-226 during his career and was elected to Cooperstown in 1991, sent an open letter about McGwire to The Associated Press this week suggesting that the big redhead hasn’t been appropriately repentant for his admitted use of steroids during his career.
“You have not even begun to apologize to those you have harmed,” Jenkins said in the letter.
Jenkins took up the cause of his fellow pitchers, claiming that McGwire’s success at their hands had come unfairly.
“You altered pitchers’ lives,” he wrote. “You may have shortened pitchers careers because of the advantage you forced over them while juiced. Have you thought about what happened when they couldn’t get you out and lost the confidence of their managers and general managers? You even managed to alter the place some athletes have achieved in record books by making your steroid-fueled run to the season home run record.”
And Jenkins is right. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that McGwire’s cheating robbed some pitchers of their careers and of fame, money and more that were rightfully theirs. That’s not even to mention the embarrassment and indignity that he and many other frauds brought to the game itself.
But Jenkins’ suggested apologies for McGwire weren’t limited to the diamond.
“You need to apologize to your family for depriving them of your presence as time goes on because you are likely going to die earlier than if you had never relied on andro to carry you to all your successes,” he said.
Ouch. As if the 23.7 percent of the Hall of Fame ballot McGwire received a few weeks back hadn’t been sufficiently soul-crushing.
Ironically, though, Jenkins has a bit of a history of his own with illegal drugs. Back in 1980, while playing for the Rangers, the Ontario native was caught in the possession of cocaine, hashish and marijuana by customs officials in Toronto. He was suspended indefinitely by then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn, but two weeks later Jenkins was reinstated by an independent arbiter after a judge cleared him of any wrongdoing. Ironically, the idea has been posited that Jenkins’ Cooperstown entrance was delayed because of the drug controversy.
Nonetheless, Jenkins wasn’t shy about voicing his opinion on how Big Mac would have fared in the ’60s and ’70s if pitchers had suspected his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
“It’s tough to hit a home run off your back,” Jenkins said, hinting that McGwire would have been thrown at regularly. “In my era, [Tom] Seaver, [Bob] Gibson, [Don] Drysdale, [Steve] Carlton, there were so many guys that would have probably knocked him on his butt. He wouldn’t have hit home runs the way he did in that era.”
It comes across as disingenuous how some Hall of Famers — especially relative fringe “all-time greats” like Fisk and Jenkins — feel free to judge away the second they have their Cooperstown credentials backing them up on their soapboxes, especially when the incomparable Hank Aaron has elegantly stated he’s willing to forgive McGwire’s misdeeds.
But the fact remains, the criticisms flung McGwire’s way by folks like Fisk and Jenkins are 100 percent warranted. Why? Because it seems that they played the game clean. McGwire didn’t.
For that reason, there is something karmic about the way McGwire’s name is being dragged through the mud. For all of the accolades, attention and applause he received while racing Sammy Sosa toward Roger Maris‘ mark of 61 or by crushing dingers onto Lansdowne Street during the 1999 home-run derby at Fenway, it’s only right that the criticism, questions and boos are equally enthusiastic now.
After agreeing to become the St. Louis Cardinals hitting coach this winter, something Jenkins also criticized this week (“I’m not sure a home-run hitter can teach a good hitter, a contact hitter, how to play, how to hit,” he said. “He swung for the fences most of the time. How [is he] going to teach a guy that’s a .240 hitter to put it in play?”), McGwire tried to quiet his critics by coming clean and admitting his steroid use. But it seems like that’s only served to amplify the voices of his detractors.
It’s going to be a long season for McGwire. And he only has himself to blame.
