Mike Celizic

Maybe I’m being naïve, but I like to think that there are times when Mark McGwire realizes that the best thing he can do is emerge from his Fortress of Solitude and come clean.

It won’t be easy, and it’s going to hurt. But when he’s done, the pain will start to recede and the healing can begin. The alternative is to live in a prison of his own construction for the rest of his life, cut off from baseball, cut off from society, cut off from any chance of ever rebuilding anything resembling a good name.

Now would be a good time to do it. McGwire’s younger brother, Jay, is trying to peddle a book in which he outs Mark. A bodybuilder well acquainted with steroids, Jay McGwire says he personally jabbed his brother with his first load of drugs. He also writes that Mark wasn’t taking steroids when he broke Roger Maris’ home-run record in 1998. By then, he had switched to androstenedrione, a testosterone precursor which was not then banned by baseball or the government, Jay writes.

In a pathetic way, Mark’s little brother is doing him a favor. McGwire probably doesn’t see it that way, but that’s what it is. McGwire is being handed an opportunity to set the record straight. His brother has this manuscript, he’s posted excerpts on the Internet and if ever there was a time to talk, this is it.

Call a press conference. Tell the lawyers to stay at home. Tell the truth, just like Andy Pettitte did. And remind people that baseball had no rules against what he did. The game didn’t ban steroids until 2002, and the Mitchell Report has laid out baseball’s role in creating the scandal that so damaged the sport in the eyes of the public.

But the damage wasn’t as desperate as it has been made out to be. Fans didn’t stop going to the ballpark. They groused about a few players — McGwire, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds chief among them — but there’s never been any indication that there was a real backlash to what happened.

Even Congress, which professed such indignation at the juicing that went on in the game, isn’t remotely as upset about steroids as it pretended to be when the lights were on and baseball was on trial. There’s been no war on steroids like the decades-long war on drugs. Law enforcement in some jurisdictions still shakes down kids for dime bags of pot, but you don’t see gyms being raided for steroids.

You don’t see DEA agents posing with mountains of seized steroids. You don’t see public service announcements describing what your biceps are like on steroids. The truth is, the government really doesn’t care about steroids. If it did, baseball would never have gotten itself in the fix it was in, and McGwire wouldn’t be holed up somewhere trying real hard not to talk to anyone.

McGwire should be intelligent enough to realize that the people who have suffered most are the ones who have been the least forthcoming about what they did. Even little brother Jay gets that much.

Jay McGwire claims he wrote a book to clear his brother’s name. My guess is he also hopes to make a bundle of money off his famous sibling’s infamy. The story reporting this notes that the brothers are “estranged.” Gee, I wonder why that would be?

But as loathsome as a life form as Jay McGwire seems, he has a point. Big brother should listen to it.

Jay wrote about the day in 2005 when Mark McGwire appeared before a Congressional subcommittee investigating steroids in baseball and committed virtual suicide. Instead of fessing up to whatever he took to bulk up and hit baseballs into the next time zone, he kept repeating a mantra about not wanting to dwell in the past. He never lied, but only because he never said anything.