Forget (Hypothetical) Apologies, Sammy

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

By now, the vultures have been circling the carcass of Mark McGwire's baseball career for several days. Long vilified for his embarrassing performance on Capitol Hill, Big Mac finally did what the masses have begged him to do for years: come clean and admit his mistake of taking illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

Thus, the members of the sports media and the fans who have wanted McGwire to apologize for so long should be satisfied, right? I mean, they wanted him to admit he used. He did. Instead, he's once again being attacked by seemingly all comers. His entire interview with Bob Costas is being dissected and his credibility as a human being is under assault from too many angles to count. I'm left wondering if anything could have truly satisfied anyone.

Which brings me to McGwire's 1998 sparring partner in their chase to break Roger Maris' single-season home run record: Sammy Sosa.

Let's not kid ourselves, Sosa publicly admitting he used something that wasn't exactly legal would be as much a revelation (read: not one at all) as McGwire's announcement this week. It would get tons of coverage. There would be plenty of sanctimonious ink spilled and plenty more accusations levied.

The end result, however, would be the same as if he simply stayed quiet for the remainder of his life. There's little doubt that Sosa was a user and that he's not getting into the Hall of Fame. What can possibly be gained by once again becoming a target for the media firing squad?

He could go farther than McGwire and give detailed information about every single time he used. He could regale us with tales about how he injected himself and who else was cramming that needle into his hindquarters.

It still wouldn't be good enough.

We'd have another week of TV, radio and Internet filled with fans and members of the media alike scorning Sammy Sosa's existence.

I personally hope Sosa doesn't bother with crafting some sort of statement or apology. It's not worth the time or effort.

In addition to not being able to "win," no matter what he said, Sosa would be dealing with a double standard that is seemingly unbreakable.

What do the names Fernando Vina, Bobby Estalella, Marvin Benard, Larry Bigbie or Gary Bennett mean to you? Nothing? They were named in the Mitchell Report. You want players of significance? OK. How about Brian Roberts, Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch, David Justice, David Segui (who just received an absurd Hall of Fame vote, by the way) and Matt Williams?

See, apparently you only owe an apology and the entire truth if you juiced and then broke records. If you juiced and weren't very good, ah, that's all right. If you were juiced and were very good, apparently that's OK with the masses, too. The recovering-from-injury excuse worked well for Roberts and Pettitte, for example. The only way it's apparently not acceptable is if a player put up Hall of Fame-worthy stats. If that happened, you better damn well apologize, lest you face the wrath of every angry mob on every Internet message board and radio call-in show.

People can slap all the asterisks and caveats they want on any part of Sosa or McGwire's careers. I'm not even arguing against that because it might make sense on some level. The problem is that they shouldn't be singled out. There's an entire era that was stained, and there were much more than a handful of players using.

We can't do anything about that now. Let's move beyond continuing to admonish guys who duped us over 10 years ago. It's like if someone played a practical joke on you in high school and you still wanted to pick a fight with him at your 10-year reunion. Get over it already.

Life's just too short.

The game is relatively clean now and baseball appears to be willing to take measures to keep it so. Sosa apologizing would only take the discussion further away from what actually matters: the 2010 season, which is going to be yet another exciting one.

So, please, Sammy, just keep that trap shut.

After all, pitchers and catchers report in just over a month.