Mark McGwire appeared at the St. Louis Cardinals Winter warm-up fan fest yesterday- to cheers.  Prior to his entrance, Jack Clark, a local broadcaster, appeared and was loudly booed.  Said one fan, “I don’t think you should ever boo a Cardinal unless they are outright loafing or something.  But I think Jack Clark was wrong.  Who is he to pass judgement on any one”

And that’s the way this went.  Most fans, from writer Joe Strauss’ piece, agree- they wish he would have been honest sooner, but we all make mistakes. And they are right.  It isn’t the person that we were that matters today, its the person we want to be, that we are striving to be that counts. We can’t get hung up on yesterday, or we simply relive the unpleasantness.   McGwire is striving to be a better person.  Does he need to come back and work in baseball? Doubtful. But he is facing the music, and getting ready to help those young hitters do it the right way.

Even the Maris family agrees that McGwire can be forgiven. This Ron Kroichick piece describes McGwire’s phone call to the widow of Roger Maris the morning before the announcement was made.  Though the Maris family would like Roger’s record to remain in some way acknowledged, they do forgive McGwire, Rich Maris going as far as saying he is like a brother.

The question is can Hall of Fame voters forgive as easily.  The question is, does McGwire belong in the Hall if he never breaks that record.  Lets just say he hit the same number of home runs over, and never broke the record?  He passed 500, so the magic number was reached.  But he was a pretty one dimensional player throughout his career.

For me, he saved baseball- but I am not sure he does that without breaking the record.  And the records should be the hallowed part of the game.

We will have to see how time- and baseball writers- judge this.  But the fans, at least the Cardinal fans have spoken.