Big Mac Coaching is a Supersized Mistake

We all know that the past two decades of baseball will forever be tainted with steroid paranoia. Whenever we review a past icon’s career from the mid-90s to today, there will always be that nagging voice in the back of your head that is wondering just how shrunken that player’s testicles are. A crude way of suspecting steroids, sure, but I needed to get your attention somehow. So what ways can a player rectify a tarnished career? Mark McGwire is hoping that a coaching stint can pull his name out of the juicy mud and maybe earn himself some respect.
By now that magical afternoon in March of 2005 spent conducting a congressional hearing that essentially doomed such one-time legends as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens has gone down in history as one of the most detrimental events to the sport of baseball. It was as embarrassing as it was destructive, and such heroes have been stripped, beaten and hung out to dry. I’m a firm believer in second chances and mistakes of circumstance, but I’m not convinced that Mark McGwire, who has taken the past few years of obscurity and shame as a champ, is making the right decision.
When the witch hunt ended, everyone involved looked like a complete clown in their own way. Sammy Sosa had magically forgotten how to speak English, Rafael Palmeiro denied using steroids and was soon exposed with a dirty test, and there was the complete collapse of Roger Clemens, who was slated to be tagged as one of the greatest pitchers in history. McGwire, however, seemed to take the abuse over the years with whatever scrounged up dignity he had left. Though he dodged questions like Neo dodged bullets, his stoic approach and low-profile post-baseball life kept him under the radar while Palmeiro was exposed, Sosa attempted a sloppy comeback in Texas that further tainted his numbers and arose suspicion that his success was steroid driven, and Clemens, while inventing his own language, looks like a total snake. So why, Mark, must you go down the same dead-end path? The greatest tragedies ever written never involve one of the heroes coming back to life, only to die again… unless you forget about Romeo and Juliet (damn, I thought I had a good one there).
Big Mac’s decision is understandable. He is going to try to rebuild his credibility through less spotlight conducive means. Why would he try to do this after being relatively invisible for the past years? Simple. He’s doing what Pete Rose did a few years ago when he finally admitted to betting on baseball. He wants to get into the Hall of Fame. McGwire only received 23.5 per cent of the vote in 2007 and 2008, leaps and bounds away from the 75 per cent required to enter the baseball shrine. The difference between him and Rose are two-fold. Besides the obvious haircut issues that Rose has, McGwire never wrote a cash-grabbing book, or hunted for cameras to tell his sob (S.O.B.) story. McGwire played golf, relaxed and enjoyed life away from the game. Also, what McGwire did at the time was never officially illegal or against the rules. Rose bet on baseball. Right there, it is “bye bye, salut la visite.” McGwire merely abused a weak or non-existent drug policy to his benefit. Slick and dishonest, perhaps, but some might argue that it’s smart, or even necessary. That isn’t the debate I’m looking to invoke, however. What I’m saying is that while trying to revive his respectability, McGwire has chosen a path doomed to fail.
Much like how Wayne Gretzky was looked upon in confusion when he became the head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes, a job which was destined for mild results, McGwire is going to be putting his batting “expertise” to work for a club that already boasts the best hitter of the decade: Albert Pujols. Gretzky had it tougher, though. An NHL head coach feels tremendous pressure. When you lose, you’re the guy under the microscope. Perhaps a goalie will feel some of the heat, but multiple losses strung together can spell your doom as a head coach in the NHL. Lucky for Gretzky, though, no one had the testicular fortitude to fire the greatest hockey player of all time. McGwire might not be so lucky.
So why exactly is this a bad idea? It is a bad idea because McGwire was never a great hitter. What?! Blasphemy! Like I’ve said countless times before, numbers do not lie. Sure he hit a ton of home runs, but his career average of .263 is nothing close to being the maestro you have to be to teach professionals how to hit. Power is unteachable, and McGwire was blessed with it. Nowhere did anyone ever suspect him of being a master of the craft as guys like Tony Gwynn, Ichiro or even Albert Pujols are. McGwire is doomed to fail, which could further tarnish his hopes of baseball immortality.
To his benefit, however, McGwire is in a safe position. Being the Cardinals hitting coach is like being Tiger Woods’s dry cleaner. Whether you’re good at it or not, it probably won’t do much. You’re giving advice to the best player in baseball, Albert Pujols, anyways, so the worst you can do is learn something from him. McGwire will be fine. If all the rumours about steroid use are true, no one in baseball will have balls big enough to fire him.