So apparently some old baseball player did something or said something yesterday. Hear about it?

I have to say: I was impressed. This was everything that all the highest-horsed writers have been saying for the last five years that McGwire needed to do. Come out of “hiding.” Admit what he did. Apologize.

Those same writers and a bunch of other folk, of course, are not happy (for the most part). It’s not enough that he confessed to doing what he took. People apparently also wanted him to make guesses as to how much what he took helped him do those amazing things he did. McGwire said that he believed that he could have hit all those homers even without steroids, and from what I can tell, in these people’s minds, that opinion basically undid everything he said that they demanded that he say.

The press release yesterday afternoon immediately brought out some confusing reactions, but then it really got out of hand with the live Costas interview. Milwaukeean blowhard Tom Haudricourt said that McGwire blew the interview because his claim that he didn’t believe the steroids helped him “goes completely against the science of the substances.” MLB Network blowhard Ken Rosenthal immediately opined that McGwire blew the interview because (paraphrasing here) “nobody is really going to believe that the steroids didn’t help him.” You’ve even got people at excellent blogs like Big League Stew and Talking Chicago Baseball (the latter of which I have to believe would admit to some anti-Cardinal bias) saying, “[s]hame on McGwire for not acknowledging” that he benefitted from steroids and that he “spoke in a mix of half-truths and ego-driven lies.”

Well…everybody's entitled, I guess. I just really wonder what he could have been expected to do differently.

Mark McGwire is not a scientist or a doctor. As far as I can tell, he’s not even quite a college graduate. I doubt USC ever made him take a single chemistry or biology class. If you’re looking to McGwire for information on what steroids can do to one’s ability to hit a baseball, you might as well look to Jessica Simpson for advice on choosing a good boot-making leather.

More than that, McGwire has spent almost his entire life doing one thing, and doing it better than almost everybody else on the planet. You could hear it in his own words, when he talked about leading the (college) nation in home runs and such – he’s just always been good at this. World-class good. How easy do you think it would be to take a step back all these years later, honestly look at yourself, and analyze how much of it was you and how much of it was because you had “help”? Is that really something we can expect any professional baseball player to do? I just can’t even see a reason why we should want him to do that. Isn’t the point what he did, not what it did to him?

Personally, I think McGwire believes essentially every word he said. He rarely hesitated or looked uncomfortable. He was often near tears. I'm sure he was heavily coached, but I just don't believe he's that smart or that good of an actor. More, though, I don't care. He said what he did and when he did it. The other stuff just doesn't matter.

The other thing is, you and I just don’t know what steroids do or don’t do to a baseball player's abilities. McGwire doesn't really know either. And despite the haughty, barely-even-English pronouncements of Mr. Haudricourt, "science" doesn't seem to know what "the substances" do either. Nobody really has a clue. Some people -- like McGwire, evidently -- think they help you get healthy or stay healthy; some people think they make you more susceptible to injury (and I suppose it’s entirely possible that they can do both). There’s certainly anecdotal evidence that they help some people hit baseballs farther, but nobody knows how much. I’ve long suspected that we’ve seriously overestimated the magnitude that effect...but the point is that we don’t know. Do I think McGwire was helped by PEDs? Of course. But I have no idea how much he was helped. And given that he’s talking about his own livelihood, I think McGwire’s position is a very reasonable one for him to take.

Most of all, though, I don’t think it was his job to take a position. His job, as imposed on him by the moralizing sector of the sports media, was to admit that he took steroids and to apologize. That’s exactly what he did. He didn’t try to convince us that it was a vitamin shot. He didn’t even try to convince us that the steroids didn’t help; all he said was that that was what he believed. His responses seemed -- to me, anyway -- honest and heartfelt, and about as unrehearsed as we can ever expect these things to be. It set the standard for what future mea culpas should be.

Now let’s get over the hate. Or redirect it toward Selig and Fehr, where it belongs.