By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.comOAKLAND -- He is emerging from the mist, rejoining society, rejoining baseball. Mark McGwire returns and where that could lead, dare we say Cooperstown, is yet to be determined.
McGwire became a near recluse, wanted to stay as far as possible from another question, another interview, another critical story.
He lived in a gated community in southern California's Orange Country, hung around with those who had the good sense not to be inquisitors and played as much golf as possible.
The votes came in for the Hall of Fame, and McGwire, who at one time, before the steroids, before the painful appearance before Congress, would have been a certain inductee, was rejected. And rejected a second time.
You can think what you wish, but McGwire belongs in the Hall. So does Barry Bonds. So do others whose performances were worthy.
The steroids, the artificial enhancements, were part of the late 1990s and early 2000s, part of baseball. They made players better, but they didn't make stars out of failures.
In time we will realize that. What Mark McGwire presumably realized is that he wants dearly to be in the Hall, and to do that he needs to rehabilitate an image that has been pounded as he once pounded the ball.
Or maybe the Hall of Fame is of no concern. Maybe McGwire decided he needed something in his life, an assignment, a challenge.
So here he comes, a few days past his 46th birthday, connecting with the man who managed him, first with the Oakland A's, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony LaRussa. When LaRussa signed once more with the Cards, he brought along as his hitting coach Mark McGwire. And why not?
McGwire was always shy, hesitant to face the press. He became part of the A's "Bash Brothers'' almost by accident. He could hit home runs, but it was Jose Canseco, the extrovert, who hit the jackpot with the media. McGwire wasn't a bad guy, just a reluctant guy, at the opposite end of the clubhouse and the spectrum from Canseco.
At Damian High School in LaVerne, some 30 miles east of Los Angeles. McGwire even skipped baseball one semester to join the golf team. He was an independent sort. At USC he pitched, but when you're 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, the future is as a slugger. Sorry, hitter.
The 1987 season in Oakland, when he was Rookie of the Year, following Canseco, who earned the award in '86, McGwire hit 49 home runs. No artificial enhancements. Just natural ability. And yet he would tell writers, "I'm not a home run hitter.''
He wasn't any kind of hitter in 1991 when, unhinged because of family troubles, McGwire dropped to a .201 average. But he recovered quickly enough, and the photos of him and Canseco smacking forearms became familiar.
Retirement came after 2001. McGwire was out of sight until that painful 2005 hearing before a House committee when, asked whether he had played "with honesty and integrity, he responded, "I'm not going to go into the past or talk about my past. I'm here to make a positive influence on this.''
Refusing to address allegations against him and other players in Canseco's tell-all book, McGwire explained, "My lawyers have advised me I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family and myself.''
He took the Fifth. And he took a whipping from the media. Presumed innocent until guilty? McGwire was presumed guilty until innocent. And then he went deeper into seclusion.
Wright Thompson of ESPN.com chased after McGwire a couple of years back, and wrote a wonderful piece with interviews from old pals and ex-USC teammates, but nothing at all from McGwire himself.
"He just wants to slink away,'' Ken Brison, son of a former McGwire Foundation board member, told Thompson. Well, now he's unslunk.
Now he's agreed to put on a uniform and advise people with bats in their hands how to make contact while, one supposes, doing his best to avoid contact with journalists.
The game will be better off with McGwire as part of it. McGwire will be better off. Baseball cherishes its past, even the unfortunate parts. Triumph and figurative tragedy are ingrained. Willie Mays is a frequent visitor to San Francisco's AT&T Park, Tommy Lasorda a regular at Dodger Stadium. Barry Bonds has showed up now and then at Giants home games and was all over the place during the recent Presidents Cup international golf matches at San Francisco's Harding Park.
Mark McGwire is back. Maybe Barry also becomes a batting coach. Maybe it doesn't help their Hall of Fame chances, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
