Well, you can officially add Mark McGwire to the face of steroids, joining such notable turds as Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and Manny Ramirez.  It took a while, but Big Mac finally came clean about his steroid use.

“I wish I had never touched steroids,” McGwire said in a statement. “It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”

Look, it wasn’t like it was a big secret.  Anyone with three functioning brain cells knew McGwire was juicing.  But it was all (accurate) speculation, since McGwire refused to talk about steroids.

Until now.

Claiming five years ago, in front of a Congressional hearing, that he was “not here to talk about the past,” McGwire’s reputation has been in shambles.  That was never more evident than during the Hall of Fame voting.

“I remember trying steroids very briefly in the 1989/1990 offseason and then after I was injured in 1993, I used steroids again,” McGwire said in his statement. “I used them on occasion throughout the ’90s, including during the 1998 season.”

That’s right.  That magical season, when McGwire and Sammy Sosa both attacked Roger Maris’ home run record, with Big Mac coming out on top with 70 homers.  Makes all that celebrating he did with the Maris family all that much more pathetic.

“After all this time, I want to come clean,” he said. “I was not in a position to do that five years ago in my congressional testimony, but now I feel an obligation to discuss this and to answer questions about it. I’ll do that, and then I just want to help my team.”

And come clean he has.  Now he can go about rebuilding his tarnished reputation, if that’s even possible.  But like that old saying  goes–”too little, too late.”

[San Francisco Chronicle, Image via Wikipedia]