Mark McGwire has decided to speak about his past. Per the AP:

Mark McGwire has finally come clean, admitting he used steroids when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998.

McGwire says in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that he used steroids on and off for nearly a decade and he apologizes for his actions.

He says: “I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”

I don’t want to say that I’m surprised; in fact the only thing I’m surprised about is that he admitted to it prior to spring training.

Does this change my opinion on him and his career? No, I still think he’s a Hall of Famer; look at the period and tell me a player that there aren’t questions about. What he did in 1998 made baseball relevant again.

This was the right thing for him to do. Now when he meets with the media for the first time, he can answer a few questions and move on. He can also do more to prevent kids from taking Steroids, like he promised to Congress when he testified.

I do think this was planned from the day he was announced as the hitting coach for the Cardinals. He’ll be the coach for 1 year, so he could get his name back in the public, state he did do steroids, say he was sorry, then move on and get into the Hall.

LaRussa has stated that he just found out this morning that McGwire had done steroids, which I don’t believe. If he didn’t know in Mac’s playing days, then he definitely knew when he pushed for Mac to be his hitting coach this off season. I’m not saying it would ever happen, but if LaRussa truely just found out, then he’d push for Mac to be fired and they’d bring in a new hitting coach. This would show that LaRussa truely didn’t know and that he and the Cardinals organization have no tolerance for steroids.

As I said, I don’t see that happening.

I still like what Mac can bring to the Cardinals, as he’s done great work with Skip Schumaker and would hope he could do the same for some of the other young guys in the organization.