Mark McGwire admitted during the last week that he did used steroids during his career that was highlighted by 583 home runs but now wants every one to forget the tales of steroids to move ahead.

This admission has once again reaffirmed the fact that there is a relationship between steroids and sports. It is believed that baseball fans would find it difficult to forget the steroid tales that were once related to their favorite stars.

From Freep.com:

“I hope you all can accept this,” McGwire said. “Let’s all move on from this. Baseball is great right now, baseball is better.”

McGwire, the new Cardinals hitting coach, is getting support from his boss, manager Tony La Russa, and St. Louis‘ best player, Albert Pujols.

“Go talk to Mark, I think he cleared up everything, he closed the doors,” Pujols told reporters at the team’s Winter Warm-Up. “If you want to reopen those doors I know the right guy. Go talk to Mark about it. … There’s 300,000 people that just died in Haiti and you guys just want to concentrate on Mark McGwire. Come on, give me a break.”

The admission by McGwire has also blasted the claims of anti-doping and government officials that have been long in place for curbing the use of anabolic steroids in sports.

Jose Canseco tries to take advantage of the season’s opening day to draw attention to himself as he stands on the stage of Bovard Auditorium to talk about his steroid use and his book Juiced, where tells all about the wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs in the MLB. But very few came, about 50 people in an auditorium that has a seating capacity of 1,235. That alone speaks volumes on what people think of Canseco. His book was a bestseller but it was not enough to draw a crowd to hear him talk about it. A diminishing star. Steroids had definitely made him infamous.

Clad in a motorcycle jacket, Canseco admits that he still uses testosterone. In 1998, however, he stopped using steroids because he had a depression. It was during this time, too, that he played with Toronto and was able to score 46 home runs. He could have made the choice to quit there but he did not.

From The LA Times:

In fact, 1998 has made him reconsider things. After long telling anyone who’d listen that he might not have made the big leagues without steroids, maybe the year in Canada shows he could have become a star without drugs. He holds tight to this new notion.

“I have regrets,” he says. “The way people look at my career was compromised by using. Then the whole thing fell apart. . . . I was cut off. Not being able to play at 36. That’s how old I was when baseball colluded to keep me out. They were sending a message to all the other players: ‘Stop using, or you will be like Jose.’ “

Canseco keeps talking, unburdening. He seems tinged with a paranoia that makes him easy to dismiss, except he has so often been right.

“I have nightmares, almost every night. I’m on some team, but they will not let me actually play. The bus leaves without me. . . . “

Several players were implicated in his book to have used performance-enhancing drugs. These were Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez, Jason Giambini, and Juan Gonzalez. Canseco himself admitted to using steroids himself.

Elusive Mark McGwire breaks his silence when he agreed to do an interview with the New York Times provided that he will talk about his new career of being a hitting tutor to Major League Players. He would not entertain any question about the controversy sparked by former teammate Jose Canseco when he mentioned McGwire to have used performance enhancing drugs in his book.

McGwire rarely appeared in public ever since he retired from professional baseball. Even more so when he appeared before a Congressional hearing for his alleged involvement with steroids.

From ESPN.com:

The Times said McGwire agreed to the interview “with the understanding that it would focus on his work as a hitting tutor, and not on other issues.”

McGwire did briefly address criticism he has received for being linked to performance-enhancing drugs. “I’m such an easygoing guy,” he said, according to the Times. “I don’t need to sweep away any bitterness.”

McGwire took himself out of the public eye after he retired in 2001 with 583 career home runs. That withdrawal became nearly total in 2005, after McGwire – implicated in former teammate Jose Canseco’s book as a steroid user — infamously declined to answer questions from congressmen about whether he used steroids, repeatedly saying, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

McGwire said he had always been interested in coaching and almost had a shot at it when he was supposed to go to the spring training in 2008 in lieu of Tony La Russa, his former manager. Unfortunately a family situation had prevented him from going. McGwire is currently the hitting instructor for Major League players Holliday and Crosby from the Oakland As and Duncan and Schumaker from the St. Louis Cardinals. They were worried that issue of McGwire being linked with steroids could affect their reputation in the MLB.

Just recently, Jay McGwire has started his quest to look for a major publishing house to publish his proposal for a book entitled, “The McGwire Family Secret”. Jay is the younger brother of Mark McGwire, a Major League Baseball player who had been accused of using  anabolic steroids. While Mark chose not to comment on the issue when his teammate Jose Canseco claimed that he (Canseco) injected the former with steroids, Jay is the one who chose to speak up for his brother. Jay started using steroids after he managed to purchase some using money he got from his insurance. According to Jay, he introduced his brother to a steroid dealer after he won a bodybuilding competition back in May 1994. The steroid dealer explained everything to Mark and the baseball player had been using Deca Durabolin since.

From NY Daily News

Jay McGwire’s book proposal describes an idyllic childhood as the youngest of four boys in an exceptionally athletic family (another brother, Dan McGwire, was an NFL quarterback). The youngest McGwire says he stopped using steroids when he started feeling ill effects from the drugs – depression, high cholesterol, high blood pressure – and embraced religion. The McGwire brothers have had a falling-out and no longer speak to each other. Mark McGwire avoids the spotlight – he has repeatedly turned down Tony LaRussa’s invitations to attend St. Louis Cardinal training camps as a hitting instructor – but his younger brother says his story needs to be told.

“My bringing the truth to the surface about Mark is out of love,” Jay McGwire wrote. “I want Mark to live in truth to see the light, to come to repentance so he can live in freedom – which is the only way to live.”

Jay believes that if Mark would admit his mistake and apologize, he would be set free from the life of isolation that he chose. It makes you wonder if that would be enough to patch things up between the brothers