Persuasive writing: introductory concepts and techniques

¶ … Steroids

Lupica, M. (2009). For Mark McGwire and Baseball's Other Steroid Cheats the Truth Would Be a Hit. New York Daily News.

For many years, professional baseball has avoided categorical association with steroid use. While physical enormity and the implementation of sheer force are traditionally correlated in the public consciousness with sports like basketball and football, baseball has been less perceived a sport of brute power. The article by Mike Lupica, published this past week in the New York Daily News, describes the way that baseball's reputation came crashing down. The article focuses on the fact that reputed steroid user and former holder of the single-season homerun record, Mark McGwire has been invited back to the league as a hitting coach for his former team, the St. Louis Cardinals.

The article focuses on the varying degrees of dishonesty perpetrated by current players such as the Yankees' Andy Pettite and Alex Rodriguez, who was outed and thereafter admitted to usage before the start of the 2009 season. Appropriately, the article focuses on the seemingly different standards to which individual players are held, with 'A-Rod's popularity and playing success helping to gloss over his misdeeds. The article observes that in many ways, McGwire has been treated unfairly for being the first of the major stars to have been exposed. As Lupica notes of McGwire, "he will teach hitting now and the idea that he shouldn't be allowed to is absurd. And there will be an ongoing debate about whether McGwire needs to face the media the way Pettitte and a-Rod did. It would make terrific theater if he did come clean about how dirty he was in the old days, tell us what kind of hardcore help he got. But he won't." (Lupica, 1)

This is a sentiment that captures well the situation for baseball, as the Lupica article discusses the treatment which is likely to be visited upon some of the game's formerly great and since disgraced stars such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire. The Lupica article is insightful for identifying an inconsistency in our response that suggests baseball is still uncertain of how to address its crisis.

To the Editor:

I was pleased to read Mike Lupica's thoughtful sentiment on the recent hiring of Mark McGwire out of retirement. Appropriately, Lupica's focus is not the set of misdeeds that we already know were committed by some of the best players to ever step on the field. Instead, he focuses on the inconsistency and hypocrisy of the league and its commissioner, Bud Selig.

Selig, who oversaw the era of steroids with blatant inaction, today presides over the witch-hunt which holds individual players responsible for an epidemic that permeated the whole of the sport. Today, though testing policies are becoming stricter, it remains uncertain exactly how to address the issue of past steroid use. With prominent players such as Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez continuing to play the game under this cloud of controversy, McGwire's return to the game seems a matter of entitlement.