Mark McGwire

Baseball great Mark McGwire has admitted using steroids after years of denial.

I still like to hold onto the naïveté that it is a gift to play in any professional sport. So many try, and so few make it. Those who do make it have a responsibility first to themselves and then to the fans that elevate them by adulation, admiration and expectation.

Players are temporary holders of the sacred gift of gamesmanship and they must hold it honorably as a Grail for those who follow them.

Mark McGwire failed in that honor. It is also a failure of major league baseball and all professional sports that tend to look the other way, especially when dollars are at stake.

In recent years professional sports players have been charged with murder, assault, burglary, and weapons and drug possession. For them it is a litany of lack. Lack of self esteem, lack of judgment, lack of character and lack of respect for the institution of whatever sport they are playing and the game of hard competition.

It may also be the Pandora's box of plenty. Too much money, too soon, too young and not enough experience in the hard, but honorable choices of life.