If Maris had an asterisk, should McGwire get one too?

If Maris had an asterisk, should McGwire get one too?

TIM DAHLBERG , AP Sports Columnist. Associated Press. New York: Jun 30, 2004. pg. 1

Copyright Associated Press Jun 30, 2004

Roger Maris' home run record was tainted simply because he played a few more games in 1961 than Babe Ruth did a few decades earlier. At least that's what the Bud Selig of his time, Ford Frick, wanted everyone to believe.

Maris' big crime, of course, wasn't that he got a few more at- bats than the Babe when he hit 61 home runs. He had taken the record of a national icon, and Frick wasn't about to let Ruth's legacy be diminished.

So Maris got his asterisk, Ruth remained the beloved Babe, and baseball went on its merry way.

cheap hotel in PortimaroIf only it were that simple today.

Baseball's home run records are a joke, shattered by hulking men with biceps that bulge suspiciously every time they're jammed on a pitch and the ensuing popup finds its way over the fence.

Ask most fans, and they'll tell you baseball players are juiced. Some most assuredly are, as the first wave of steroid tests last year proved when 5 to 7 percent of the 1,438 anonymous tests turned out positive.

Barry Bonds, the single-season homer champion, is linked almost daily to the BALCO steroid probe, even as he closes in on the career hallowed home run record held by Hank Aaron. Though Bonds angrily denies everything, sprinter Tim Montgomery reportedly testified that BALCO's founder told him Bonds switched to a clear steroid last season to avoid being caught in baseball's new tests.

While Bonds proclaims his innocence, he's not going to win this one in the court of public opinion. With every look at his muscle- bound body and every blast into McCovey Cove, fans wink knowingly at each other about the source of his power that enabled him to eclipse Mark McGwire's single-season homer mark when he hit 73 in 2001.

Even a former slugger with some pedigree of his own questioned how Bonds could do it.

Keila Vald Cuarto de hotel barato"Somebody definitely is guilty of taking steroids. You can't be breaking records hitting 200 home runs in three or four seasons," Reggie Jackson said a few months ago. "The greatest hitters in the history of the game didn't do that."

Despite the suspicions, there's no asterisk beside Bonds' name _ at least not yet.

But maybe it's time for baseball historians to take another look at the slugger who preceded him into the record books.

McGwire hit a then astonishing 70 home runs in 1998, the last two on his final two swings of the season. He did it with a jar of andro in his locker, which under baseball's policy of see no evil, hear no evil, was perfectly legal at the time.

Times have changed, though, as baseball's chief operating officer almost casually revealed last Friday. No one knew it then, but baseball banned androstenedione on April 12, the same day the Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of the steroidlike substance.

For some reason, the commissioner's office didn't announce the ban at the time. The guess is baseball was embarrassed it took so long to prohibit a substance already banned in the Olympics, NFL and NCAA.

Regardless, the action puts baseball into a bind. McGwire, who broke Maris' record and for a few years was the single season home run king, admits to bulking up on the junk when he did it.

Yes, McGwire was always a big home run hitter, hitting 49 in his first full season with Oakland. But how many of those 70 home runs in 1998 might have been warning track fly balls if McGwire hadn't used something to make himself bigger and stronger?

Maybe, just maybe, Maris' record wouldn't have been broken then.

If there's any doubt what andro did for McGwire, just take a look at him now. You'll find him slimmed down and playing golf, a sport where bulging muscles aren't encouraged.

Just don't ask him about andro or steroids because he wants no part of the conversation, as was made clear when he attended Mark McGwire Day in April in St. Louis.

His former manager, though, doesn't mind doing the talking for him.

"When's the last time something legal affected anybody? He didn't do anything illegal," Tony La Russa said Tuesday. "It was an over the counter drug, he displayed it there (in his locker). It's tying it with the steroid thing, but Mac did nothing illegal. He hit 49 as a kid, and he hit 65 the next year (after he hit 70)."

Former teammate Jim Edmonds agreed. He suggests baseball went too far to even ban the substance.

"Everybody's trying to get bigger and stronger in whatever way they can do it, if they can get it over the counter, by all means," Edmonds said. "Are they going to close down GNC because they sell things that help your body get better?"

Edmonds misses the point. McGwire himself said he gave up the substance in 1999 because he didn't want kids using andro. And even though you could once walk into a nutrition store and buy the stuff, other sports had already realized its dangers.

McGwire won't be taken out of the record books because he used andro. Baseball actually owes him and Sammy Sosa a debt for their thrilling home run duel that drew attention back to the beleaguered game.

Galway hotelsBut if Roger Maris can get a mythical asterisk for playing a few more games than Babe Ruth, then maybe McGwire's substance-aided season should have one attached, too.

____

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org

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