Baseball now has another huge asterisk.

The national pastime has another huge smudge on its character.

But slugger Mark McGwire, the home run king who obliterated the record book back in the 1990s, including the previous record for dingers in a season set by Roger Maris, wants us to know he was only doing it so he could recover quicker from a series of injuries.

Spare me.

McGwire had the gall to go on TV last night and turn on the tears.
Earlier in the day he finally admitted what most people suspected, if they hadn’t already come to that conclusion.

McGwire was on the juice; he used steroids on and off for most of the 1990s, and yes, he was artificially pumped up the summer he and slugger Sammy Sosa re-energized baseball with their home run duel.

In 1998 McGwire hit 70 home runs, something that was unheard of to that point. Roger Maris had held the single-season home run record of 61 in 1961. That mark carried an asterisk placed there by Major League Baseball because Maris played in more games than the legendary Babe Ruth, who hit 60.

Spare us the tears, Mr. McGwire. It took you more than a decade to come clean. You went to Washington and turned a congressional hearing on steroids into a farce. You lied to both baseball officials and the fans.

I’m not sure what’s worse, McGwire’s admission, or people like MLB Commissioner Bud Selig praising the slugger for his “act of contrition,”
which he said “will make McGwire’s re-entry into the game much smoother and easier.”

McGwire is taking a job this year with Tony LaRussa and the Cardinals as a batting instructor. But he had to clear the air over the steroid use first.

He might start by advising the young Cardinals to stay away from pills and needles.