Mark McGwire | mark mcgwire pictures | mark mcgwire steroids

Mark McGwire (born October 1, 1963) is a former Major League Baseball player who played his major league career with the Oakland Athletics and the St. Louis Cardinals. He is replacing Hal McRae as the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals for 2010.

For his career, McGwire averaged a home run once every 10.61 at bats, the lowest at bats per home run ratio in baseball history (Ryan Howard is second at 11.32 and Babe Ruth is third at 11.80).In 1987, he broke the single-season home run record for rookies, with 49. In 1998, McGwire and Sammy Sosa achieved national fame for their home run-hitting prowess in pursuit of Roger Maris' single season home run record; McGwire would break the record and hit 70 home runs that year.Barry Bonds now holds the record, after hitting 73 home runs during the 2001 season. In 2010, McGwire publicly admitted having used performance enhancing drugs throughout his career.

In 2010, after accepting the position of Cardinals hitting coach, McGwire admitted to using steroids during his playing career.[ Many of McGwire's accomplishments, particularly the historic 1998 season in which he broke Roger Maris' single season homerun record, came under suspicion during Major League Baseball's steroid scandal in the 1990's. Despite being under a cloud of suspicion for years McGwire repeatedly refused to discuss his involvement with or use of steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.

In 1998, after an article by Associated Press writer Steve Wilstein, McGwire admitted to taking androstenedione, an over-the-counter muscle enhancement product that had already been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the NFL and the IOC. At the time, however, use of the substance was not prohibited by Major League Baseball and it was not federally classified as an anabolic steroid in the United States until 2004.

Jose Canseco released a book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big, in which he wrote positively about steroids and made various claims — among them, that McGwire had used performance enhancing drugs since the 1980s and that Canseco had personally injected him with them.

In 2005, McGwire and Canseco were among 11 baseball players and executives subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing on steroids. During his testimony on March 17, 2005, McGwire declined to answer questions under oath when he appeared before the House Government Reform Committee. In a tearful opening statement McGwire said,
“     Asking me or any other player to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve the problem. If a player answers 'No,' he simply will not be believed; if he answers 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations.... My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself. I will say, however, that it remains a fact in this country that a man, any man, should be regarded as innocent unless proven guilty."    ”

When asked by Representative Elijah Cummings if he was asserting his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, McGwire once again responded:
“     I'm not here to talk about the past. I'm here to be positive about this subject.     ”

On January 11, 2010 McGwire admitted to using steroids on and off again for a decade, and he said "I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era." He admitted using in the 1989/1990 offseason and then after he was injured in 1993. He admitted using them on occasion throughout the '90s, including during the 1998 season.

McGwire's decision to admit using steroids was prompted by his decision to become hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals.