Why Do The Eloquent Guys Never Do Drugs?

A wordsmith he ain't

Mark McGwire’s interview with Bob Ley on ESPN is a poor performance.  Ley is by no means aggressive or hostile, but he puts out some fundamental questions which McGwire should answer if he wants this media blitz to settle the steroid issue once and for all.

One of the more basic questions (pharaphrasing here): “If steroids don’t help performance, why have you been apologizing for using them?  And why apologize to the Maris family?”

McGwire doesn’t answer either question well.  And I really want to be forgiving (see my previous post).

Baseball needs more Grandersons

It’s funny how we have such low standards for athletes’ speaking abilities in general.  If they say anything in a post-game interview beyond, “Well Joe I just went out there and played hard and this is a big win for us,” color us impressed.  But when an athlete is on a tight spot like this, we suddenly expect them to be rhetorical masters and are disappointed by anything less.

Curtis Granderson would know how to satisfy us in a steroids interview.  But then again, Curtis Granderson wouldn’t take steroids (I’m pretty sure).  Maybe that’s the problem.  The eloquent ones don’t do drugs.