FanHouse Mark Mcgwire

Whoever was just hired as the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, raise your hand. All right, you in the suit. Tell us how you got the job. What? You don't want to talk about it? Hey that seems pretty weird!

Yes, 2010 will see the return of shadowy figure Mark McGwire to Major League Baseball. He should use his influence to get the Cards to sign Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds to coaching deals as well, and everyone in St. Louis can root for a ball club instructed by the Monstars.

Today's Dugout is after the jump.

This can't end well. In fact, unless the city of St. Louis is just into the bizarre -- you know, such as plans to replace that large arch downtown with a Starbucks or something, this will end sooner than later.

Mark McGwire as Cardinals hitting coach?

I'm still waiting for the punch line.

In order for this to work, McGwire has to discuss what he hasn't wanted to discuss forever, and you know what that is. Instead, he spit at a bunch of congressmen during a hearing on steroids during the spring of 2005 on Capitol Hill by telling them, "I'm not here to talk about the past."

Yeah, well. The guy has no choice now. He will be hounded by his "past" on every Cardinals road trip. I'm guessing that more than a few folks in St. Louis also will have questions about his "past."

Mark McGwire will end his baseball exile and accept a position with the St. Louis Cardinals as their hitting coach, a Cardinals source confirmed to FanHouse's Ed Price Sunday afternoon. He'll replace Hal McRae, who's held the position for five years. The story initially appeared on Brian McRae's Twitter account, though it's since been deleted.

Reggie Jackson is right. So is Jim Rice, along with Rick Telander, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, who joins me as a baseball Hall of Fame voter and as a hardliner who agrees with Jackson and Rice:

No steroids guys in Cooperstown.

No Roger Clemens. No Barry Bonds. No Mark McGwire. No Sammy Sosa. No Rafael Palmeiro. No Alex Rodriguez. Nobody within a syringe of evidence showing they were artificially enhanced during any portion of their playing career.

I don't care that Ty Cobb was a racist (and possibly worse), that Mickey Mantle joined others as prolific drunks, and that Gaylord Perry spit his way into Cooperstown. They're already in the Hall of Fame. I can't do anything about their entries, but I can do something about Clemens, Bonds and the rest.

Since a few members of The Fifth Dimension are from St. Louis, they likely won't mind the way I tweak one of their songs -- you know, Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In. So here I go: Jupiter isn't aligned with Mars, but with the Gateway Arch when it comes to Mark McGwire these days.

That's because this is perfect timing.

In fact, for a bunch of reasons we'll discuss in a moment, there is no better time than now for the former St. Louis Cardinals star to end his cowardly seclusion. He could leave the shadows of southern California to speak in the spotlight of the All-Star festivities that begin this weekend in St. Louis . He could do so without a Jimmy Swaggert confession, but it wouldn't hurt his rapidly sliding chances for reaching Cooperstown if he included some crying and a lot of pleading.

OAKLAND -- The Oakland Athletics invited the members of their 1989 World Series championship team back for a reunion on Tuesday, and a couple players were conspicuous in their absence: Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco.

Canseco, who was otherwise occupied (see right), was hardly missed.

A day after Carney Lansford said he was still upset at Canseco for writing a tell-all book, Dave Stewart said the A's distaste for Canseco started long before that.

"This book had nothing to do with it, he was a bad teammate," Stewart said.

A few weeks ago there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding Phillies outfielder Raul Ibanez, steroids and a blog. More specifically, a media firestorm started when a blogger named JRod wrote a post on MidwestSportsFans.com that looked at the possibility of Ibanez using steroids because of the way he'd been playing in the 2009 season.

The Philadelphia Inquirer then picked up on the story, brought it to Ibanez, Raul responded and then the next thing we knew Jerod Morris, JRod, was showing up on ESPN's Outside the Lines and was berated by Ken Rosenthal and John Gonzalez. Morris was shown off as the latest example of all things wrong with blogging and had to be reprimanded for his seemingly innocuous deed.

So it turns out Sammy Sosa was a steroid freak.

Who'da thunk it?

When it comes to surprises, last week's revelation was like finding out Iran's elections were juiced for the incumbent. If you want shocking news, however, you've come to the right place.

We are ready to reveal all the players who failed baseball's 2003 drug test. The results were supposed to be kept confidential, but Alex Rodriguez's name was leaked to Sports Illustrated and Sosa was outed last week in the New York Times.

There are 102 names to go. This drip-drip-drip could go on for years, but we're not going to let it.

Just try to leave him out. Sammy Sosa dares you.

He is retiring from baseball -- was he still here? -- and he says he's just going to "calmly wait for my induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Don't I have the numbers to be inducted?"

Well, of course he has the numbers. Everyone knows that. But this one is going to be interesting because not one person believes he did it clean, without steroids.

Yet not one has actually made an accusation. It's just one of those things you think you know.

So another baseball hero got snared in the performance-enhancing web. Today, Manny Ramirez.

Tomorrow, Roger Clemens?

Oh yeah, never mind.

Alex Rodriguez? Sammy Sosa? Mark McGwire? Barry Bonds?

You really do need a scorecard to keep up with the falling stars. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of trying to remember who's on first and who's on Winstrol.

You're never going to get rid of the dirty people. The only way to clean up the game is to get rid of the rules that turn people into dirtbags.