Mark McGwire

Mark McGwire, who played first base for the 1984 USA Olympic team, was one of the most powerful sluggers to ever play Major League Baseball, though his legacy is checkered. McGwire played in college at Southern Cal, after which he was the 10th overall pick of the 1984 Major League Baseball Draft, selected by the Oakland Athletics.

McGwire played in the Major Leagues from 1986-2001. He was with the Athletics from 1986-97, and spent his last five years with the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League. He hit 583 home runs in his career, and led the majors in home runs five times, in 1987 and 1996-99. He was a 12-time All-Star.

In 1998 McGwire hit 70 home runs, breaking the vaunted Major League record of 61 by Roger Maris in 1961. During that year, he and Sammy Sosa engaged in a chase to break Maris’s record, with McGwire coming out on top, as Sosa finished the year with 66. The home run record chase captivated the American sports public in the summer of ‘98. McGwire and Sosa repeated their record-breaking ways in 1999, as McGwire hit 66 homers and Sosa 63.

However, during the year it was revealed that McGwire was found to be taking androstenedione, an over-the-counter anabolic steroid analogue which was, however, not banned at the time by Major League Baseball. It was also rumored that he was using stronger anabolic steroids, because of significant increase in muscle mass in the last few years. McGwire later admitted to using steroids. Sosa was similarly suspected of using performance enhancing drugs, but at a 2005 Congressional hearing, Sosa, through his attorney, insisted he had never taken PEDs.

Despite the records he set, because of the opprobrium that hounded him by the steroid rumors, McGwire was not inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame (through 2020). He later became a respected hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres in the Major Leagues. In 2000 McGwire was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.