Mike Celizic

There weren’t any winners in the congressional hearings on steroids. The representatives failed to ever explain why they were holding them. And the baseball people whose feet were being held to the fire came off as evasive and defensive.

And no one came out of the day with more damage to his legacy and reputation than Mark McGwire.

He came in as the larger-than-life slugger who hit home runs that traveled higher and farther and more frequently than the Washington-New York shuttle. He left as a puny and whiny figure, a man whose only defense or explanation for some of the most celebrated moments in baseball was that he didn’t want to talk about it.

He could not have done more damage to himself had he admitted he took steroids because there was no rule saying he couldn’t. And because they made him stronger and helped him wreck a sacred record for home runs in a season.

That, at least, would have been honest, and even in this day and age, honesty is an admired trait. We’ll forgive pretty much anyone, as long as they’re honest about what they did and sincere about making things better.

But McGwire didn’t make the admission. Instead, he turned into the Mark McGwire talking doll. Push the button and the microchip spits out, “I don’t want to talk about the past.” Push it again and it says, “I’m a former ballplayer.”

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He said he wants to help convince kids not to take steroids. But he did nothing to establish any credibility on the subject. They’re bad, he said, but he refused to say why, because, as he made abundantly clear, he doesn’t want to talk about the past. (That, by the way, is going to make for a very awkward acceptance speech at his Hall of Fame induction.)

McGwire talked about how he wants to help kids, but it’s hard to talk to kids about being honest and honorable and courageous when you display none of those qualities yourself. Kids are pretty trusting of adults, up to a certain age, at which point they become very skeptical of their elders.

The skepticism grows from seeing adults act hypocritically, from hearing them say one thing and watching them do another. If a kid thinks you’re a phony, you’re finished.

And McGwire came off as a phony. For him, it wasn’t about saying anything that could incriminate himself. It was about talking about things that could damage his reputation.

We’ve all got things in our past we’d rather not have to revisit. Usually, we don’t have to. But sometimes they come back to bite us in the buns. At that point, there’s nothing to do but make a clean breast of it, absorb the fallout, and move on.

We don’t even know for sure what McGwire took, and still it’s impossible to forgive him for it. He can not move forward unless he at least acknowledges the past. The longer he hides behind “I don’t want to talk about the past,” the longer he will remain trapped in that same past.

He was once the biggest, strongest guy on the field, a man who rendered even other adults speechless with his presence.

On Thursday, McGwire looked as dangerous as a daisy. Dressed in a suit and tie and with reading glasses perched on his nose, his physical presence was that of an accountant. He did nothing to dispel that impression when he spoke.

McGwire was a man with nothing to say, with no sense of obligation to his legacy and his sport, with no convictions, with no indication that he’s grown as a person from what has happened in his life. He nearly broke down when talking about two teenagers who committed suicide after doing steroids, but he gave us no clue as to why those deaths so moved him.

No feeling person could hear the stories told by Ray and Denise Garibaldi and Don Hooton about their sons’ involvement with steroids and subsequent deaths and not be moved. But unless you have a personal connection with those deaths, it’s very unlikely you’d be moved to tears. That’s just the way we’re wired.

I can only conclude that McGwire felt some connection with the loss of those parents. The connection is located at the subject he refused to address: his own involvement with performance-enhancing drugs.

That, at least, is my conclusion – my opinion – and until he offers a better explanation, I’m sticking with it. I’m not going to lose any sleep waiting for that explanation.

Nor am I going to lose sleep waiting for Congress to do something other than command a day of tube time and lecture rich athletes and sports executives about how to behave.