On January 12, 2010, Mark McGwire came clean about his steroid use.  According to McGwire, it wasn’t for the extra leg strength, or the quicker bat speed that the steroids allowed him to have. McGwire said that his usage of anabolic steroids was for health reasons only, and it was for nothing else.

“I believe I was given this gift. The only reason I took steroids was for health purposes,” says McGwire.

It was hard to believe then, and it isn’t much easier now, thanks to little brother Jay McGwire.  In his newest book, “Mark and Me: Mark McGwire and the Truth Behind Baseball’s Worst Kept Secret”, Jay McGwire spills the beans on big brother Mark.  He goes into detail about the dosages of the performance enhancing drugs that “Big Mac” was using from 1994 until 1997.

According to Jay McGwire, “Oh, his strength. His leg strength was awesome. I talked about what he is doing on the leg press — over 600 pounds for 20 reps. That is pretty good for a baseball player. And that is the key in baseball, I think. … Mark didn’t really have big legs until after that. He couldn’t do some other serious leg workouts because of his lower back issues, so we had to be careful with that.”

Sure, health reasons seem feasible.  Lower back issues? Believable.  But what happens when the fans wanted to see more and more from Mark?  He couldn’t just say, “Sorry guys.  I’m all healed now.  No more fame.  It’s not what you want, it’s me.  Besides, these things are illegal.” Could he? He should have, but he didn’t.  Even Jay elaborated by saying, “Fans are funny. As soon as he starts hitting home runs they are kissing his butt. It shows you that the fan wants to see things that are freaky. Seeing records being broken. … People like to see freaky people produce, if it is a fight or whatever. That’s what the fan wants.”

It’s safe to say that Mark knew what he was doing.  He knew the precautions, and he chose to openly defy them.  It wasn’t like he was doing small stuff- a pill here, an injection there.  Jay McGwire described normal dosages as:

“Dbol [oral, 50 up to 70 mgs/day], Winstrol [oral, 50 up to 80 mgs every other day] and Primobolan [oral, 60 up to 80 mgs/day] for a minimum of 12 weeks.”

Even Jay told ESPN reporters, “At 12 weeks and those dosages, that’s not baby food.”

Kirk Radomski also spoke with the reporters and described how McGwire wasn’t taking healing dosages of the drugs.  He explained how growth hormone would make sense, but once anabolics were thrown into the mix, growth in size was being looked for.  As for the questions we’re asking ourselves, such as: Why didn’t anyone say anything when they realized Mark was getting so big so quick?  Could it be part of the vicious cycle commonly known as the “don’t ask, don’t tell” process? More than likely.

In my opinion, Jay should have been questioned much sooner.  It’s funny how, in the midst of all of this chaos, no one stopped to ask one of his closest relatives.  Jay himself even said, “It’s funny, huh? You’d think that you’d want to go to the core of the story. And no one has really suspected me. I’ve been the person all along.”

Information from Mike Fish of ESPN.com was used in this article.