Trietley: McGwire’s admission came at the perfect time

I’m here to talk about the past.

Five years ago, Mark McGwire refused to do so at a… I’m here to talk about the past.

Five years ago, Mark McGwire refused to do so at a congressional hearing on steroids, instead wanting “to be positive about this subject.”

But last week, McGwire admitted his steroid use, a habit that he said began in 1989 and included his 1998 70-home run season.

“I’m coming clean and being honest,” he said.

In response to McGwire’s admission, commissioner Bud Selig chose not to take action.

“The so-called ‘steroid era,’” Selig said, “is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark’s admission today is another step in the right direction.”

Selig went on about the “toughest and most effective” drug testing program in major sports — one that doesn’t test for human growth hormone — and sang about how baseball is all sunshine and triples now.

For how tough Selig’s magical lock-tight urine test supposedly is, I can’t help but think we’re being too lenient on the transgressors of the steroid era.

“This statement of contrition,” Selig said, “will make Mark’s reentry into the game much smoother and easier.” Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa said he’d love McGwire, recently hired as the St. Louis hitting coach, to pinch-hit once this year.

I’m glad we’ve finally got these wrongdoers out of the game.

McGwire released his statement on a Monday afternoon — the Monday after undefeated No. 1 Kansas fell to Tennessee, after Pete Carroll left Southern California to coach the Seattle Seahawks, and after the Packers and Seahawks scored a combined 96 points in an NFL playoff time.

Good timing, McGwire. On a one-to-10 scale of media frenzy, with Andre Agassi’s crystal meth experimentation a four, the McGwire story clocked in around five or six.

When news broke, ESPN brought LaRussa and his friend, former basketball coach Bobby Knight, on to Baseball Tonight to give a completely non-biased evaluation of the situation.

“Who decides what can be used and can’t be used?” Knight asked. “Gatorade is a performance-enhancing substance … As far as Mark is concerned, he should have been in the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.”

Human growth hormone enlarges the heart, damages the liver and causes acromegaly, a condition that makes the jaw and eyebrow bones jut out like a Neanderthal’s. It’s also illegal.

Gatorade comes in fruit punch and fierce grape.

“There’s not a pill or an injection that’s going to give me — going to give any player — the hand-eye coordination to hit a baseball,” McGwire told Bob Costas.

Human growth hormone, which the former St. Louis slugger admitted to taking, improves eyesight.

Does nobody realize that McGwire and others tarnished over a decade of baseball?

Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro faded from view after their 15 minutes of scandal ended. It takes a minute to remember Jason Giambi. Jack Cust, Paul Lo Duca, Paul Byrd and Eric Gagne were all named in the Mitchell Report, the result of an investigation into the steroid-addled world of professional baseball, but I doubt anyone remembers.

Perhaps we’re just numb to it all now. BALCO was shocking. Barry Bonds dominated the headlines for years. There were books and television interviews and book tours about the whole thing.

Six years later, Alex Rodriguez showed it now takes nine months to go from steroid pariah to World Series hero.

Bonds himself will probably end up in the Hall of Fame, with which voters will rationalize their votes.

“He probably was going to be a Hall of Famer even without the steroids.”

Shoeless Joe Jackson still won’t be in the Hall.

Steroids only come up as the easy way out for rival fans, who call for asterisks on World Series championships and forfeits of wins from teams that employed users.

Yankees wins belittled the Red Sox’s 2004 championship because of David Ortiz’s 2003 positive test. Yet New York had 23 players named in the Mitchell Report under contract at some point — the most of any franchise.

It was everywhere. Every team had at least four players named — congratulations, White Sox and Twins — while the average franchise had 12. Everybody did it, and it killed the game.

Jim Thome hit 564 career home runs with his pine tar-caked bat and avoided any implication of steroid use. The lumberjack-looking Thome once said, “The strongest thing I put into my body is steak and eggs. I just eat.”

In the age of steroids, 564 (hopefully) clean home runs gets stuck behind Sosa’s 609.

Roger Clemens sits above Tom Seaver and Lefty Grove on the all-time wins list. Every time somebody passes Mickey Mantle or Harmon Killebrew — poor Harmon Killebrew — on the all-time home run list, I cringe. I miss when the drug of choice in baseball was Dock Ellis’ LSD.

Roger Maris is still the single-season home run record-holder to me. Between Slammin’ Sammy and A-Bombs from A-Rod, there’s only one solution to put all these juiced records behind us.

The recent past? Let’s not talk about it.