Mark McGwire - 60 HOMERS CLUB MEMBER

Mark David McGwire

Mark McGwire was born on Oct. 1ST 1963. His MLB debut was Aug. 22, 1986 for the Oakland Athletics. His final game was Oct. 7, 2001 with the St. Louis Cardinals

Career statistics
HR 583
RBI 1414
AVG .263

McGwire married Stephanie Slemer, a former pharmaceutical sales representative from the St. Louis area, in Las Vegas on April 20, 2002. They reside in a gated community in Shady Canyon Irvine, California and together created the Mark McGwire Foundation for Children to support agencies that work with children who have been sexually and physically abused to help come to terms with his difficult childhood.

McGwire currently avoids the media. He spends much of his free time playing golf. He is an exceptional golfer and it has been rumored that he will try to qualify for the Senior PGA Tour when he turns 50 in 2013.

His brother Dan McGwire was a quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks and Miami Dolphins of the NFL in the early 1990s, and was a first round draft choice out of San Diego State University and played with Marshall Faulk.

Mark appeared on an episode of the sitcom Mad About You, playing a ballplayer infatuated with Helen Hunt's character.

Mark attended Damien High School in La Verne, California where he started playing baseball, golf, and basketball.

In 1999, the The Sporting News released a list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. The list had been compiled during the 1998 season and included statistics through the 1997 season. McGwire was ranked at Number 91. That year, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2005, The Sporting News published an update of their list and McGwire had been moved up to Number 84.

However, in the 2007 balloting for the Baseball Hall of Fame, McGwire failed to attain election, receiving 128 of the 545 cast, 23.5% of the vote. It is widely conceded that this was related to the steroid scandal and McGwire's less than forthcoming testimony. Based on his career numbers, McGwire may eventually be voted into the Hall of Fame.


Steroids controversy

Although McGwire has never admitted to or been convicted of any steroid use, many of his accomplishments, particularly his historic home run surge late in his career, have come into question due to his connection to the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball.

In 1998, after an article written by Associated Press writer Steve Wilstein, McGwire admitted to taking androstenedione, an over-the-counter muscle enhancement product. While legal for use in MLB, it had been banned by the NFL and IOC.

In 2005, former "Bash Brothers" McGwire and Jose Canseco were subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing on steroids, along with five other baseball players and four baseball executives. Canseco had released Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big, a book in which he spoke positively about steroids, and made various claims-- among them, that McGwire had been using performance enhancing drugs since the 1980s. During his testimony on March 17, 2005, McGwire declined to answer questions under oath when he appeared before the House Government Reform Committee.

In a tearful opening statement McGwire said,

“ Asking me or any other player to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve the problem. If a player answers 'No,' he simply will not be believed; if he answers 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations.... My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself. I will say, however, that it remains a fact in this country that a man, any man, should be regarded as innocent unless proven guilty." ”

When asked if he was asserting his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, McGwire once again responded:

“ I'm not here to talk about the past. I'm here to be positive about this subject. ”

While no legal action has been taken against McGwire, in baseball or out of it, his testimony cost him public affection and support. In 1999, McGwire was voted to the All-Century Team, and upon his retirement in 2001, he was uniformly characterized as "a future Hall of Famer." However, when his Cooperstown eligibility began in 2006-07, McGwire received less than a quarter of the vote from the very same baseball writers who had treated him as an icon. Several of these sportswriters indicated that they were casting a protest non-vote in McGwire's first year of eligibility, or that they wanted more time to consider the developing steroid story in baseball; some noted that McGwire's relatively low career batting average (.263) and the fact that he did not attain 2,000 hits during his career as deciding factors to abstain. It is unclear where McGwire's true level of ballot support will end up leveling off.

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