Heller: McGwire’s mum return

The sadly misguided St. Louis Cardinals have hired Mark McGwire as a hitting coach for 2010. The question is, why in the name of Stan the Man do they want him?

No matter how good he might be in the role - and I suspect not very - let’s call it a Cardinal sin.

Look at the record, as political challengers like to say. For 16 seasons in the bigs, Big Mac batted a very ordinary .263. This included such stellar averages as .231, .235 and .201 for the Oakland Athletics from 1989 to 1991 and .187 in 2001, his last season with the Cardinals.

But what about those 70 home runs in 1998 and 583 lifetime? Ay, there’s the rub, as Willie Shakespeare (or his designated ghost) might say.

We don’t know for sure that McGwire ingested steroids, but the circumstantial evidence seems overwhelming. His preposterously inflated late-career stats certainly have convinced those of us who vote for the Hall of Fame. In three appearances on the ballot, he has collected less than 24 percent of the votes.

In fact, I doubt that he’ll ever enter Cooperstown without buying a ticket. The same goes for Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and anybody else widely suspected of needling more than the opposition during his playing days.

Without concrete proof of drug use, this might seem unfair to some. But it is what it is, to not quite coin a phrase.

If you’ll permit a digression, it has been 20 years since another horsehide transgressor, Peter Edward Rose, was banned for life from baseball for betting on the game. My friend Steve, who has spent a lifetime watching and writing about sports, thinks Rose deserves to have his sentence commuted while the suspected steroid villains should stay on the outside looking in.

“Pete has paid his dues,” Steve reasons. “Besides, betting on his own team didn’t affect his numbers on the field. But those other guys…”

It remains to be seen how much McGwire’s advice can do for Cardinals hitters, many of whom suffered a postseason offensive letdown. I can’t quite see Mac helping Albert Pujols, who is two or three times the natural hitter McGwire ever was.

During the recent news conference in which his employment was announced, McGwire was a no-show. Undoubtedly, questions would have arisen about steroids, and that would have been, literally, too embarrassing for words.

“By no means is he trying to hide, and by no means are we trying to hide him,” general manager John Mozeliak insisted.

Right. And the Cardinals’ uniforms don’t have redbirds perched on bats either.

Unfortunately for the ballclub perhaps, memories linger of McGwire’s evasive 2005 appearance on Capitol Hill when, with tongue tucked firmly in cheek, he told lawmakers, “I’m not here to talk about the past.” That ludicrous testimony brought widespread ridicule and shame raining down on an ex-ballplayer who once seemed like Superman in knickers.

McGwire, however, needed only one supporter to rejoin the Cardinals for next season: Tony La Russa. The club’s longtime manager has been and is a stalwart defender of his. Perhaps it’s appropriate that Tony also has a law degree, because barristers always stick by their man, right or wrong.

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