Monday night, half-sleeping through the sporting news, I saw Mark McGwire confess to what everyone already knew: He did steroids. As I watched, I was joined by two other Sarahs: Snarky Sarah and Sweet Sarah.
While they’re identical, they were easy to tell apart. Sweet Sarah had brought a candle from Pier 1 as a hostess gift; Snarky Sarah made fun of me for being half-asleep at 10:15. “He only did them for ‘health reasons?’” Snarky Sarah scoffed. “The health of what? His lats?”
“Now, now,” said Sweet Sarah. “Even minor injuries can have a huge impact on an athlete’s career. Baseball’s season is so long. Plus, when everyone else is doing it, what choice do you have? You start worrying that without the steroids, you’d be no one. There’s a whole emotional component.”
“Right,” retorted Snarky, not convinced. “So he did take them for his health — the health of his ego. And I can’t believe he thinks he could’ve hit all those homers sans juice. Sure, you need hand-eye coordination. But a lot of players since Roger Maris had hand-eye coordination, and none of them hit 70 dingers in a season. Who is he kidding?”
“Honestly,” replied Sweet, sadly, “He’s probably just kidding himself. Imagine if your major career accomplishment was based on a lie. He just can’t face it. To be so deep in denial … well, that’s just sad. We should give him props just for coming clean; it’s more than a lot of his peers have done.”
Then on the news, McGwire said he didn’t remember the names of the drugs he took. Snarky let out a cackle. “Aha! Apparently there were so many that he couldn’t even keep track. Big Mac is to steroids as Wilt Chamberlain is to women, is that it? I’m sure at some point, they all just blend together.”
“Well,” Sweet Sarah replied, “Those drug names are long and way complicated.
Androhexydopronate or something. He’s a ballplayer, not a chemist.”
“And he ‘didn’t want to look like Lou Ferrigno.’ Tell that to those cement mixers he called arms,”said Snarky. Or Sweet. I couldn’t tell anymore.
“Guys,” I yawned, and they turned to look at me. “Are we gonna write about this?”
“Well … everyone else will be doing it, so what choice do we have?” Why did that sound so familiar? I was just on the edge of remembering when the TV went to commercial and I awoke.
How long had I been asleep? And why did my apartment smell like … was that patchouli?
– Sarah Green also writes for UmpBump.com.
She can be reached at sarah@umpbump.com.
