"I wish I had never touched steroids," McGwire's statement to the AP said. "It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era."
At a late October press conference to announce that Tony La Russa would return to St. Louis for at least one more year, the Cardinals coach said that McGwire would return to the team as its hitting coach. Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak and other team officials said McGwire would address the steroid scandal and his return to the game with reporters. But until Monday, McGwire has remained silent.
McGwire, who retired in 2001 with 583 home runs, has kept a low profile since he was identified as a steroid user by former teammate Jose Canseco in "Juiced" and his evasive testimony in March of 2005 before a House committee investigating steroids in baseball. The Daily News reported four days before McGwire's now-infamous appearance that a California man named Curtis Wenzlaff provided illegal anabolic steroids to both Canseco and McGwire when they were teammates with the Oakland A's.
McGwire may have stonewalled the congressional panel in 2005 because he feared the information could have been used against him in a criminal investigation.
Wenzlaff was arrested during the early 1990s by Michigan-based FBI agents Greg Stejskal and Bill Randall during Operation Equine, a three-year steroid investigation that led to 70 arrests for steroid trafficking. The News reported in 2005 that Stejskal had warned Major League Baseball that it had a steroid problem but the game's brass ignored the warning.
