I was reading an article on the Post's website about some comments Mark Prior made about his former USC teammate, Anthony Reyes, when I came across some comments from Mike Matheny about Mark McGwire.

Over the years I've heard tales of local St. Louisans having personal encounters with various players, outside the stadium. Some have been good, and some have been bad, but the most impressive story I ever heard was about Mike Matheny, and that combined with the overwhelmingly positive comments people involved in the game (teammates, coaches, writers, etc.) have had about him, I think of him as a really upstanding, trustworthy person. So naturally, I was very interested to see what he had to say on this subject. He starts out with this:

"I hate that. It's tough to watch," Matheny said. "I'm a big fan of Mark's. I know how hard he worked to achieve what he accomplished and now only one person is trying to destroy all of it. With what Canseco says, it casts all players in a bad light. My home runs shouldn't be in question, but now, all of us are being looked at as to whether or not what we did is, and that's not right."

Sounds pretty good so far. I hope he was joking about anybody questioning his home runs, but he still makes a good point. Because of a bad apple or two (or 20, we'll probably never know), many others face unwarranted scrutiny. However, the most interesting of his comments to me was this:

Asked whether he thought McGwire ever took steroids in his career, Matheny, his teammate in 2000-2001 with the Cardinals, said, "That's none of my business. All I can say is I know how hard Mark worked. I was privileged to be his teammate."

Now, I know he could just be respecting his former teammate's privacy - McGwire barely came out of seclusion even to deny Canseco's claims, so he's obviously a man who appreciates his privacy. But why wouldn't Matheny jump at this opportunity to officially put his legendary reputation behind Big Mac? The first thing that comes to my mind is that he doesn't want to jeopardize his stature by saying something that may or may not be accurate. This could be interpreted a number of ways. It could mean that Matheny doesn't know, one way or the other, whether Mark used steroids or not, which is probably true, considering they were only teammates for 2 years. Or it could mean that he has his own suspicions, but doesn't dare make any claims without solid evidence. It could even mean that he is fully aware of steroid use in McGwire's past, and saying that it's none of his business and pointing out that Mark worked hard is an easy way to offer support without being untruthful. After all, it is none of his business, right?

Actually, doesn't every player deserve to know? I think Matheny made that very case when he pointed out that this issue "casts all players in a bad light". If there are players out there that have information about which players have used steroids in the past, wouldn't it be in their best interest to bring it to light? Unfortunately, that would likely do nothing more than start a giant finger-pointing session that would ruin even more reputations than have already been called into question. So where do we go from here? What is the best course of action for players and fans amidst this controversy? I think the best thing that can be done is that which already has been done - put a tougher steroid policy in place. It could be better, but at least it has mandatory punishments and publicly available results. Beyond that, there's not much we can do. We can't go back in time and test certain players who we may suspect of steroid use. We can't strike certain lines from the record books based on suspicions and speculation. All we can do is make sure nothing like this happens again, so that we never have to question players’ statistics and reputations like this again.