via:usatoday

“Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad,” Royals pitcher Gil Meche said.

The guaranteed contract is a fundamental principle of Major League Baseball, as much a part of the game as balls, strikes and outs. No matter how a player performs, or how his body holds up, he must be paid in full. Only in rare cases — an injury sustained off the field, gross personal misconduct — does a player forfeit his paycheck.

But the case of Gil Meche is rare for an entirely different reason. Meche, a 32-year-old right-handed pitcher, had a contract that called for a $12 million salary in 2011. Yet he will not report to Surprise, Ariz., with the rest of theKansas City Royals for spring training next month. He will not have surgery to repair his chronically aching right shoulder. He will not pitch in relief, which involves a lighter workload.

Meche retired last week, which means he will not be paid at all.

“When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it,” Meche said this week by phone from Lafayette, La. “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”

Meche’s decision plays against type — the modern athlete out for every last dollar. There have been, over the years, athletes who took less money to play for one team over another, Cliff Lee being the latest when he agreed to pitch for the Philadelphia Phillies. And yes, Ryne Sandberg retired from the Chicago Cubs in 1994, forgoing nearly $16 million.

But there are very few parallels to what Meche did.

Instead, it is much more common for an injured player to report to spring training, go through the motions of rehabilitation and collect his paycheck. Lenny Dykstra played his last game in 1996 but did not announce his retirement until after the 1998 season, when the Philadelphia Phillies paid him $5.5 million. Mo Vaughn of the Mets made $15 million in 2004, even though an arthritic knee had ended his career the year before.

“In no way is it assumed that at the end of a deal a guy is expected to walk away if he can’t play,” said Jim Duquette, the former Mets general manager. “It’s just so odd and so rare. There was no way that we would have ever had a conversation like, ‘Hey, Mo, listen, you’re not able to play, so you should retire.’ ”

Sandberg, it turned out, returned in 1996 and essentially earned back some of the money he had left behind. And the novelty of Mark McGwire’s decision to retire from the St. Louis Cardinals with two years left on a contract worth $30 million was tarnished by his subsequent admission of steroid use.

“This isn’t about being a hero — that’s not even close to what it’s about,” Meche said this week. “It’s just me getting back to a point in my life where I’m comfortable. Making that amount of money from a team that’s already given me over $40 million for my life and for my kids, it just wasn’t the right thing to do.”

The Royals signed Meche to a five-year, $55 million free-agent contract before the 2007 season, when he made the American League All-Star team. He pitched well again the next season, but by mid-2009, his body started to crumble. He made nine starts last season without a victory.

Still, the Royals fully expected Meche to pitch in relief, and to pay him the $12 million — three times more than any other player on the team. If nothing else, they believed, Meche could be a positive influence for a young roster.

But Meche knew the Royals really signed him to start games and log innings. His deteriorating shoulder, surgically repaired twice in 2001, would not allow him to do that. As a divorced father of three, he believed his children — ages 7, 5 and 3 — needed him more than his teammates did.

Meche told the Royals’ general manager, Dayton Moore, that he did not want any of the paycheck due him. No settlement, no buyout, no strings. The Royals had been roundly criticized for signing Meche in the first place — he was 55-44 with a 4.65 earned run average in six seasons for the Mariners — and Meche believed they had already paid him enough.

“He felt the organization had been very good to him, and he felt he needed to, not repay, but in his mind do the right thing,” Moore said. “I’m not saying that if a player decides to do his best and fulfill his contract that’s the wrong thing. But Gil did what he felt was right for him.”

Meche was raised in Lafayette, the hometown of the former Yankee Ron Guidry, his early pitching idol. His father, Fred, has owned a computer company for more than 35 years, and his mother, Linda, stayed home. Meche said he never had to worry about money, and his parents allowed him to focus on baseball.

Meche, who is 6 feet 3 inches, was taller than most classmates as a boy, and threw a lot harder — 92 miles an hour by his junior season. But when illness sapped his strength as a senior at Acadiana High School in Lafayette, Meche figured professional scouts would turn away. He planned to attend Louisiana State until the Mariners surprised him with an $820,000 bonus offer. Meche accepted it, bought a GMC Yukon and, he said, paid for a lot of his teammates’ meals.

“We were confident he would regain his stuff and be a sleeper in the draft,” said Bryan Price, then the minor league pitching coordinator for the Mariners. “Gil always had great stuff, and he was very athletic.”

Meche rewarded the Mariners by reaching the majors by age 20. His shoulder soon broke down, and two operations cost him two seasons.

But he showed enough promise through 2006 to entice the Royals, who paid him $43 million through 2010.

The decision to leave was not easy, Meche said, but his hometown tugged at him. Meche is buying a house in Lafayette, near his parents and sisters and friends. For now he lives in a 45-foot R.V. at a campground.

Much of his time, he said, will be spent on airplanes. Two of his children live in Phoenix with his ex-wife, and another lives in Texas. Meche spent time with all three children last week.

“I told them Daddy’s not going to play baseball anymore,” he said. “My little girl looked at me and said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said: ‘Well, Daddy’s been playing a long time. Daddy’s shoulder hurts.’ She kind of looked at me and went back to playing with the other two kids.”

There is no throwing program to struggle through anymore, no excitement to try to summon for a game that hurts too much to play. Baseball is over for Meche, who spent Monday night with family friends in Lafayette, eating gumbo, drinking beer, relaxing. He has no specific plans, except to settle in his hometown and see his children whenever he wants.

“He gave his heart and soul to his profession,” Moore said. “You only have so many throws in you.”

Meche knew he had none left, and he would not pretend otherwise. He said his dream in baseball was always simple — to pitch as long as he could — and now that he has achieved it, he needs nothing more.

Don't feel too sorry for the cellar-dwelling Pittsburgh Pirates. Losing has been profitable.

The Pirates made nearly $29.4 million in 2007 and 2008, according to team financial documents, years that were part of a streak of futility that has now reached 18 straight losing seasons. The team's ownership also paid its partners $20.4 million in 2008.

The documents offer a rare peek inside a team that made money by getting slightly less than half its income (about $70 million) from MLB sources -- including revenue sharing, network TV, major league merchandise sales and MLB's website. The team also held down costs, keeping player salaries near the bottom of the National League, shedding pricier talent and hoping that untested prospects would blossom.

The club's earnings were included in nearly 40 pages of statements that the Pirates submitted to Major League Baseball and were recently obtained by The Associated Press. Team officials briefed local reporters on portions of the material Sunday. The AP wasn't invited to the session, which owner Bob Nutting said was "aimed at the recent leak."

"The numbers indicate why people are suspecting they're taking money from baseball and keeping it -- they don't spend it on the players," said David Berri, president of the North American Association of Sports Economists and the author of two books detailing the relationship between finances and winning. "Teams have a choice. They can seek to maximize winning, what the Yankees do, or you can be the Pirates and make as much money as you can in your market. The Pirates aren't trying to win."

Club executives vehemently disagreed with that assessment. Yet the numbers show Pittsburgh hasn't spent as much as its opponents -- and hasn't won.

By 2010, the Pirates had baseball's lowest opening-day payroll -- $34.9 million or just $2 million more than in 1992, the club's last winning season. The Pirates run of consecutive losing seasons is now the worst in the history of major American pro sports teams. They lost their 83rd game of the year Saturday to the Mets.

Pirate officials say they are trying to field a competitive team, and that there is nothing nefarious in the team's financial dealings. MLB backs them up, saying Pittsburgh has complied with the rules for revenue sharing, which are supposed to help less well off clubs compete with likes of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

Still, Pittsburgh fans have long complained that the club's various owners have been more interested in profits than performance, and top sports economists who reviewed highlights of the team's statements wondered if it now makes more money losing than it could by winning.

"If they won and were forced to increase their payroll from $34 million to $75 million or $80 million ... how profitable would they be?" Berri said. "There's a ceiling in terms of gate revenues."

Economist Roger Noll, a Stanford University economist, said: "Probably the Pirates would be less profitable if they tried to improve the team substantially."

Pirates president Frank Coonelly said the team spends its revenue-sharing money in several ways designed to create a winner: scouting; amateur draft choices; a new Dominican Republic academy that cost more than $5 million; player development; and, an expensive new computer system used in player evaluation.

According to the documents, the Pirates spent $23.2 million in 2008 and $21.2 million in 2007 for player development, in line with other clubs.

The Pirates' strategy of building with prospects rather than with proven players was illustrated this month when they paid nearly $12 million for amateur draft picks, putting them at or near the top of baseball, and raising their draft expenditures to $31 million for the last three years.

They also spent another $2.6 million for 16-year-old Mexican pitching prospect Luis Heredia, the highest price they've paid for an international prospect. General manager Neal Huntington, who was hired three years ago, said the team has a plan for the future and is in the middle of executing it.

Coonnelly said in an interview with the AP last week that Pittsburgh, one of baseball's smaller markets, still will need help after it climbs in the standings.

"Even when we're winning, we will be a revenue-sharing recipient ... and in much better position to generate revenue and, depending on how we control other expenses, to generate additional income," he said. "But you can win without an $80 million payroll. We're seeing it this year."

Indeed, San Diego had the second-lowest opening day payroll and the Padres are leading the NL West. Tampa Bay went to the World Series in 2008 with a relatively low budget.

Revenue-sharing funds come from each team's local revenues -- every team is charged 34 percent -- and are redistributed among the lower-revenue teams. The only stipulation is that the money should be spent on making the team competitive. There is no set amount for payroll.

"The Pirates have fully complied with the Basic Agreement requirements for the use of revenue-sharing proceeds," Rob Manfred, MLB's executive vice president for labor relations, told the AP in an e-mail. The Basic Agreement is the labor contract between the MLB's 30 clubs and the players union.

The Pirates issued a statement Sunday, saying it was wrong for the financial statements to have been released to the AP.

"Someone with access to the Club's financial statements has breached his/her fiduciary obligation to the Club by providing a copy of the Club's audited financial statements for the 2007 and 2008 seasons to the Associated Press," the statement read. "The Club is a private company that has no obligation to publicly report its financial results and, like most private companies, has consistently declined to do so."

The statement also said "the revenues generated by the club are being reinvested back into the club in both long-term and short-term investments needed to completely overhaul and rebuild this baseball team."

"The Club has paid no dividends to its partners. Moreover, while it is quite common for a Chairman of the Board of Directors of a partnership to draw a salary, (owner since 2007) Bob Nutting has never received any salary."

Apart from the financial statements, the AP obtained a check stub of a payment made from a Pirates account to settle a bill with Seven Springs ski resort, which is owned by the Nutting family. The check bore a Pirates logo, which at first look suggests a financial transaction between the two operations, but the team says it came from a since-closed joint advertising account.

"I can tell you for certain there has not been a dime that has left the Pirates organization to fund any other business of any of the partners of the Pirates," Coonelly said.

The $20.4 million payment to partners two years ago wasn't for dividends, Coonelly said, but to cover the owners' taxes on the Pirates' profits and to pay a partner who loaned the team money seven years ago when the Pirates' credit was so bad it couldn't obtain bank financing. While such tax payments are common in a partnership, they're unavailable to the common investor.

Coonelly, previously an attorney for MLB, defended the Pirates' right to make a profit, but said he would not stay with the team if he suspected any Pirates funds were being channeled to ownership.

"I would not have left the commissioner's office if I wasn't convinced that Bob Nutting was committed to putting a winning product on the field," he said. "I would not have left the commissioner's office and I wouldn't remain at the Pirates if the Pirates were simply generating resources to fund other businesses."

Still, fans and critics ask how a team that won five World Series from 1909-1979 and nine division titles from 1969-92 can be so bad.

"I think it's very important for smaller markets teams to be careful about spending payroll, but there's a reason to be skeptical and cynical about what's going on (in Pittsburgh)," Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economist, said.

To cut payroll, the Pirates have shed former All-Stars Jason Bay, Freddy Sanchez, Nate McLouth and Jack Wilson in trades, along with nearly every other player who was arbitration eligible -- or close to it -- or free agency: Tom Gorzelanny, Ian Snell, John Grabow, Xavier Nady, Adam LaRoche, Damaso Marte, Nyjer Morgan, Ronny Paulino and Sean Burnett.

They also dealt slugger Jose Bautista to Toronto for a backup catcher who has since left their system, and cut NL All-Star closer Matt Capps without getting anything in return because he sought a $500,000 raise.

The team says it needs money to have the flexibility to make better investments going forward.

So while fans wait for $6 million draft pick Jameson Taillon and $2 million draft pick Stetson Allie to develop -- both right-handers throw nearly 100 mph -- they're not exactly flocking to PNC Park.

The gem of a stadium opened in 2001 at a cost of $262 million, with the Pirates covering $44 million, after the team long lobbied for a baseball-only venue that would maximize revenues. Attendance peaked during the inagura1 season at 2.4 million, but declined to a low of about 1.6 million last year. During the two years covered by the documents, gate receipts (more than $66 million) barely were enough to cover the expenses for ballpark and game operations, public relations, marketing and administration costs, much less payroll.

Still, the club is profitable, taking in $15,008,032 in 2007 and $14,408,249 in 2008. Coonelly said Sunday the Pirates made $5.4 million in 2009.

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Matt Garza is mobbed by his teammates as he celebrates a no-hitter, the first in Rays history

If you're one of those baseball fans who loves a good slugfest, condolences: it hasn't been a great year. Baseball is entering the pennant-race season in the midst of an offensive drought. Start with the freakish number of no-hitters pitchers have tossed this year. There have been five official ones to date, the latest thrown by Matt Garza of the Tampa Bay Rays, who blanked the Detroit Tigers 5-0 on July 26. Let's also count a sixth: the perfect game that umpire Jim Joyce stole from Detroit's Armando Galarraga with a bad call back in early June. The last year baseball saw six no-hitters by the end of July was 1917. The last time three perfect games (Oakland's Dallas Braden and Philadelphia's Roy Halladay threw the official ones) were thrown in one season? Never.

These gems, however, are statistical anomalies. In baseball, the difference between a no-hitter and a one-hitter or even a two-hitter is just a bad bounce here, a fluke hit there. The pitchers were bound to break through en masse one year and deliver a flood of no-nos. "Random clusters of events occur in nature," says Bill James, the patriarch of advanced statistical analysis in baseball and a consultant for the Boston Red Sox. "I think this is one."

What's more telling is the increasing frequency with which teams are eking out only a couple of hits a game. According to FanGraphs, a baseball-statistics website, teams have registered two hits or fewer in a game on 45 occasions through July 29 this season. That's more than double the number of such games witnessed through July of the 1999 season, when baseball was at the apex of the so-called steroid era and run production was near a 20-year high.

The shift in baseball's balance of power over the past decade, from the sluggers at the plate to the pitchers on the mound, has been startling. According to FanGraphs, teams have averaged 4.94 runs per nine innings this season, down 15% from 2000 and the lowest level since 1992. Hits are also lower than they've been in 18 years. Teams are smacking 0.96 home runs per nine innings, a 24% drop compared to 10 years ago, and the lowest rate since 1993. Only four players have hit 25 or more home runs this season. Just one, Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays, has reached 30. "That's just startling," says Fred Claire, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Meanwhile, pitchers are averaging 7.03 strikeouts per game, which is an all-time high, according to FanGraphs. Some are stringing together memorable seasons. For example, Ubaldo Jimenez of the Colorado Rockies, whose home field in mile-high Denver is no pitcher's paradise, has a 16-2 record, with a 2.67 ERA. (Jimenez also tossed one of those six no-hitters.) If Florida's Josh Johnson were to end the season with the 1.72 ERA he's currently sporting, he would turn in the lowest mark since Greg Maddux's 1.63 ERA in 1995. Sports Illustrated recently dubbed 2010 a "Year of the Pitcher."

So what's causing the power shift to the pitchers? The discussion always starts with steroids. Improved drug testing has certainly played a role in declining offensive stats. It's safe to assume that fewer players are juiced now than they were in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Anecdotally, hulking caricatures like Barry Bonds seem like a rarer life form.

However, since baseball still can't test for HGH, a performance-enhancer undetectable in a urine sample, don't bank that hitters are completely clean. "We really don't know anything for sure," notes David Cameron, a former accountant and economics major who is now managing editor for FanGraphs. Further, many pitchers were also caught using steroids — wouldn't that at least partially cancel out any advantage for hitters?

Some people inside baseball wonder if more shadowy forces are at play. "Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I still believe the ball was juiced in the mid-to-late 1990s," says future Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine, who retired this year, after a 22-season career that spanned the steroid and post-steroid eras. "I don't care what anybody says, those things were like a golf ball in your hand," says Glavine. "They were so tightly wound." Glavine insists the ball softened up during the waning years of his career. 

James points to the bats. "The leagues may be doing something with bats that they're not really talking about," he says. "One of the main causes of the hitting explosion of 2000-2005 was bat design — very thin handles, machine-compressed wood and multiple coats of shellac creating a very, very hard-surface bat. I know that I have seen fewer shattered bats this year than I have seen in 15 years." Major League Baseball denies tinkering with any equipment. "We regularly have done studies on balls and bats," says MLB spokesman Patrick Courtney, "and go through quality control checks to ensure there are no differences."

Several other factors could account for the pitcher-friendly statistics. Many of the new ballparks that have opened over the past few years, like Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, Target Field in Minneapolis, San Diego's Petco Park, and the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis, are ranked among the most pitcher-friendly in the league. Further, a sharper focus on defense among front offices has clearly assisted the pitchers. After the offensive boom years, according to James, teams began to seek more balance by beefing up defenses. When your pitching staff is getting pounded, the "let's fix it" reflex kicks in. "Teams then don't worry as much about offense," James says. Errors per game have dropped 14% over the last decade.

It's also a matter of economics. During the offensive explosion, defense was undervalued. So teams are now shopping for glove discounts. And new quantitative metrics for defense make it easier for clubs to identify the guys who can catch. After the 2007 season, for example, the Tampa Bay Rays traded the top pick in the 2003 draft, right fielder Delmon Young, to the Minnesota Twins. This move enabled utility man Ben Zobrist, who has played every position except catcher, to take some of Young's right field playing time, at around 17% of Young's current $2.6 million salary.

According to an advanced defensive stat called Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), which uses play-by-play data to quantify how many runs a player saves, or costs, his team compared to an average player at that position, Zobrist is a star. Splitting time mostly between right field and second base, he enjoyed a breakout season in 2009, both offensively (27 home runs) and defensively (ranking near the top of the UZR tables on FanGraphs). Tampa Bay, a team with the 19th-ranked payroll in the majors, is fighting the New York Yankees for the best record in the big leagues.

Good defense can't stay cheap forever; though Zobrist's batting stats have cooled this season, his defense is still stellar, and in April Tampa Bay signed him to a three-year contract extension worth up to $30 million. And among players the Rays acquired in exchange for Young: Garza, the man who just pitched that no-hitter.

Perhaps these pitcher-batter swings are just cyclical, and raw talent currently happens to favor the mound. Over the past few years, scouts have raved about the crop of young, athletic, powerful arms shuttling through the minor league system — pitchers like Steve Strasburg, the rookie phenom for the Washington Nationals. And teams are paying more attention to nurturing pitchers, monitoring their pitch counts closely to avoid burning out their arms. (The main exception: Texas Rangers president Nolan Ryan, who has bucked the babying trend by shunning pitch counts. Texas currently leads the AL West.)

Technology may also be favoring pitchers. When Glavine started his career in 1987, pitchers relied on paper reports, delivered by the advance scouts, to outsmart opposing batters. Now, they can watch video of a hitter's last 60 at-bats against left-handers, and access all kinds of data with a push of the laptop button. "These technological tools have definitely helped pitchers increase their learning curve," says Glavine, who is now promoting a new video training program that can provide immediate visual feedback on important details like a pitcher's release point, the exact strike zone location on his pitches, and amount of break on the ball.

Hitters, of course, have access to the same kinds of data, but pitchers have two important advantages. First, since they hold the ball, pitchers get to make the first move; hitters can only react to their choices. Second, starting pitchers get four or five days to study for their tests. Hitters are grinding nightly, so it's harder for them to keep up.

Despite the extraordinary year they're having, pitchers haven't gained enough ground to force baseball to consider rules changes, like lowering the mound. And even concerned baseball men like Glavine aren't alarmed at what may be just a temporary imbalance. "Don't take anything off the mound, for God's sakes," says Glavine. "Let pitchers enjoy their moment for awhile."

A day after his blown call cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game, umpire Jim Joyce was the plate umpire for the Tigers day game on Thursday.

Let’s say Jim Joyce made the worst umpiring call in the history of baseball. Of course, Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was cheated of a perfect game, but he was cheated honestly, within the rules.

However, it must count, because imperfect umpires are as much a part of this sport as imperfect fielders who muff a pop fly or imperfect runners who neglect to touch a base.

Now baseball will do the prudent Bud Selig thing and study the possibility of more replay in the future. Review does clear up some mistakes in the National Football League and other sports, but baseball has its own innate acknowledgments of imperfection.

For now, there is no going back. The Tigers and Manager Jim Leyland acknowledged that before Thursday’s game with the Cleveland Indians by sending out Galarraga with the lineup card to hand to Joyce, an act of decency that should inform all fans.

Human imperfection has been implicit in this American game ever since the middle of the 19th century, when the official sat on the sideline and sometimes consulted fans if he was unsure of a call. That part is not coming back. Eventually, the umpire migrated onto the field, where he had to make calls as they happened.

Since the 1850s, this was the worst call, ever. But it stands because of baseball’s Rule 9.02(a), which says teams are not permitted to question judgment decisions. Mike Port, the vice president for umpiring for Major League Baseball, also noted Rule 9.02(c), which says, in part, “No umpire shall criticize, seek to reverse or interfere with another umpire’s decision unless asked to do so by the umpire making it.”

If Selig tried to overturn Joyce’s ghastly call, where would that lead? A commissioner sitting in the stands overturning a call in a World Series — or doing it the next day, when everybody is flying home?

Joyce, an experienced umpire, blatantly blew the call at first base Wednesday night, costing Galarraga the 27th straight out and a perfect game.

As soon as he saw the Tigers hopping around in anger, Joyce had to know he had fouled it up. Once he saw the replay, he apologized to the pitcher. What everybody must take from this mistake is that the umpire had the courage to apologize, and the pitcher had the grace to accept the subsequent one-hitter and the apology.

Not that they dare think of such a thing now, but Joyce and Galarraga are forever linked; they could even be the odd couple at memorabilia shows decades from now. On Thursday, General Motors gave Galarraga a new Chevrolet Corvette — not just for his pitching but also for his grace.

The question now is: What can be done in the near future to prevent anything this grotesque?

Upon seeing the reaction to his call, Joyce did not call a huddle of his colleagues and ask them to come up with an interpretation that would allow him to rectify the mistake.

On some plays, a home plate umpire can ask for help from his colleague at first or third base to see if the batter went too far with a checked swing. Sometimes one umpire has a different view of a play down the line. In this case, Joyce was not blocked from the play and nobody had a better view. But as Port pointed out, it was not an easy call to make at normal speed.

The other umpires were not about to rush over and say, See here, Jim, you blew it. By the time Joyce got the drift, it was probably too late to look for a subtle wink-wink from his colleagues. If they had found an excuse to huddle, they would have had a hard time justifying changing the call. In a 3-0 game, the opposing manager would have had every right to protest a reversal, no matter how bad Joyce’s first call was.

A lot of bad calls can never be reversed. Yogi Berra still leaps into the air when asked about Jackie Robinson’s steal of home in the 1955 World Series, but the record book says he was safe.

The home plate umpire Babe Pinelli called a borderline third strike on Dale Mitchell for the last out of Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Did Pinelli go with the emotion of the play? Maybe. One can only assume there was no psychological payoff for Joyce to make the call he did. He just blew it.

Sometimes a ruling can be challenged. George Brett regained a home run after a court upheld the league’s sense-of-the-game ruling in the pine-tar bat incident.

Baseball has already adapted electronic replay for home run calls. Baseball considers a run — or four runs — to be worth consulting a replay. What about a perfect game? Or a close play in a meaningless game?

I would hate to see umpires duck into the replay room under the stands. Baseball is too nuanced, and too intricate to turn over decisions to a machine. Besides, the umps are pretty darn good. It takes minutes to sort out home run calls; the games are too long already. Pro football allows limited protests of calls, but it eats up minutes. Want to sit around for five minutes during the 2014 Super Bowl in New Arctic Jersey?

The current Stanley Cup finals have had several reviews of goals, based on whether the puck crossed the goal line. Soccer is still avoiding replay on whether the ball crossed the goal line; Geoff Hurst’s controversial goalfor England in 1966 still counts.

I agree with the conservative Selig that umpires’ decisions are part of the game, but let’s face it: more electronic surveillance is coming — too late to save Armando Galarraga’s perfect game.

The saddest part about Mark McGwire's insistence that he was naturally "given the gift to hit home runs" — even as he copped Jan. 11 to a near decade's worth of steroid use — is that it might just be true. He did, after all, smash the single-season home-run record for rookies with 49 long balls in 1987 — two years before, he says now, he first tried doping. Could he have edged out Sammy Sosa to crush Roger Maris' 37-year-old home-run record in 1998 — knocking 70 balls out of the park — even without juicing? Fans will never know.

Physical performance enhancers have long been with us. The ancient Greeks popped sesame seeds and hallucinogenic mushrooms before athletics contests; Roman gladiators used stimulants to get an edge. Today's drug of choice, anabolic steroids — anabolic from the Greek verb meaning to put on or add — are synthetic compounds of such hormones as testosterone, known to build muscle and boost strength. Anabolic steroids cobble together simple materials from the gut and blood into more complex, living tissue, helping athletes bulk up — fast.

Scientists began looking for what we now know as testosterone as early as the 1840s, but research was hampered by pervasive skepticism that such a substance existed. In 1926 scientists finally first documented the existence of a male sex hormone in a bull's testicles, and by 1935 they had chemically synthesized testosterone.

Rumors persist that subsequent work on steroids occurred in Nazi Germany; doctors reportedly dosed troops with testosterone to give them an aggressive edge on the battlefield, and even Hitler himself was injected with steroids. But the science of that era is so shrouded in secrecy that it's Maryland physician — and gym rat — John Ziegler who is usually given credit for first creating anabolic steroids. After reportedly learning that Soviet weightlifters at the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships in Vienna were getting a boost from testosterone, he returned home eager to give U.S. lifters a similar up. But Ziegler's early attempts at dosing left athletes complaining of illness and with little improvement in strength.

After refining his experiments, Ziegler hit upon the first anabolic steroid, known as methandrostenolone and marketed in 1958 by Ciba Pharmaceuticals as Dianabol. But there was already a dark side. Ziegler's test subjects quickly started abusing the drugs and developed such side effects as swollen prostates or shrunken testicles — an outcome that would prompt the doctor to condemn his own creation before his death in 1983. Nonetheless, by the early 1960s pharmaceutical companies had developed nearly a dozen rival steroids, which quickly gained popularity off-label with athletes. In 1976, the International Olympic Committee became the first sports group to ban steroids. 

Over the ensuing years, a rash of doping scandals in the sports world — from cycling to track and field — prompted authorities to crack down harder on drug use. But in many quarters, baseball was believed to be largely immune. In April 1988 the Los Angeles Times reported that America's pastime remained "essentially steroid-free." While Washington Post sportswriter Thomas Boswell would call Oakland slugger Jose Canseco "the most conspicuous example of a player who has made himself great with steroids" later that year, Canseco shrugged off the charge; he went on to be named American League MVP. (He would later admit to doping from as early as 1985, saying steroids in late-1980s and 1990s baseball were as common "as a cup of coffee.")

Steroids were added to baseball's banned-substance roster in 1991, but no testing was mandated. Fans and officials largely turned a blind eye, even as players' bodies swelled along with their achievements. In 1999, even after McGwire had copped to taking androstenedione — or "andro," an over-the-counter precursor to testosterone later banned by the FDA — Senator Edward Kennedy called the slugger and his rival Sosa the "home-run kings for working families in America." A year later, the suggestion in the New York Times that up to 40% of major league players had taken steroids was largely met with crickets.

Eventually, however, the critics started to gain ground. Baseball traditionalists charged that doping undercut the sport's most storied records. The medical community, meanwhile, pointed to serious side effects: male breast development, coronary heart disease, susceptibility to injury and the mood swings known as 'roid rage, among others. The rising number of teens emulating their idols by doping provided more cause for concern.

In 2002 the major league players and managers agreed to begin limited, anonymous testing for steroids. Two years later President George W. Bush took the unprecedented step of condemning steroids in his State of the Union address, saying the use of the "dangerous" drugs in baseball, among other sports, "sends the wrong message — that there are shortcuts to accomplishments, and that performance is more important than character." That same year, standards grew tougher and major leaguers submitted to their first mandatory steroid tests. Under the penalties first introduced for doping in 2005, 12 players were suspended for 10 days each.

Two years later, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell capped his 21-month investigation into steroids in baseball — begun at Commissioner Bud Selig's request — with the infamous Mitchell Report, which called out 89 major league players for allegedly using steroids.

Testing has since helped clean up the sport. But it still struggles to shrug off the stain of doping. "I wish I had never played during the steroid era," McGwire said in his confession. He may not be alone.

Mark McGwire finally came clean, admitting he used steroids when he broke baseball's single-season home run record in 1998.

Mark McGwire finally admitted Monday what he couldn't tell a Congressional committee nearly five years ago: His home-run hitting exploits, including his stirring 1998 run to the single-season record, were fueled in part by steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

In a tearful 20-minute phone conversation with USA TODAY, McGwire said a desire to stay healthy and "get my body to feel normal" compelled him to use steroids in 1989 and 1990, and from 1993 to 1999.

McGwire said he often received steroids and human growth hormone from his younger brother Jay, a bodybuilder with whom McGwire says he has not been in contact with for eight years.

"I wish I had never taken steroids. It was foolish. I can't say enough how sorry I am," McGwire said, breaking down three times during his conversation with USA TODAY. "This is one of the toughest days of my life, so if I get emotional, bear with me. I have had to tell my son, my parents, my friends that I used steroids. It's been very hard. It's been very difficult."

McGwire's admission, made public with a statement sent to the Associated Press, comes five weeks before he will assume his duties as hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals. Before coming clean publicly, he informed his family and made apologetic phone calls to Commissioner Bud Selig, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and Don Hooton, a Texas man who took up the anti-steroids fight after his son committed suicide after taking steroids.

He also contacted Pat Maris, widow of Roger Maris, whose 61 home runs hit in 1961 was the single-season record until McGwire hit his 62nd homer on Sept. 8, 1998.

That summer, the first murmurs of drug use sprouted when an Associated Press reporter spotted a bottle of androstenedione in McGwire's locker. Andro, as it's commonly known, is a steroid precursor that was legal at the time, but was banned by the International Olympic Committee.

McGwire had admitted taking it then. On Monday, he told USA TODAY it wasn't just andro: He resumed taking steroids in the second half of the '98 season to keep his body from wearing down.

McGwire often pointed at the Maris family in the box seats after hitting home runs that year, finally finishing with 70 home runs.

"She didn't want to believe it," McGwire said of his conversation Pat Maris. "I told her that I had to be honest. I told her I was so sorry for her, her family and Roger."

McGwire hit 583 home runs in his career, which ended after the 2001 season. But considerable doubt was cast on his accomplishments on March 17, 2005, when he famously told a congressional committee investigating steroids in baseball that "I'm not here to talk about the past."

Since then, he has been almost entirely out of the public eye, while his image took a public beating. He has appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot four times but has fallen far short of the required 75% required for induction.

But Monday's admission may bring relief to the game, if not redemption.

"I think that it's wonderful that he did this," said Hank Aaron, whose 755 home runs were the most in baseball history until Barry Bonds — indicted by a grand jury for allegedly lying about steroid use — broke the record in 2007. "It takes a big man to admit this and I want to commend him for that.

"He has asked for forgiveness. He has my forgiveness. If that's all that stands in the way between him being inducted into Cooperstown we should all forgive him. I'm extremely happy he came out with this. Now baseball goes on to another chapter."

Said Selig: "This statement of contrition, I believe, will make Mark's re-entry into the game much smoother and easier."

McGwire hit a rookie-record 49 home runs for the Oakland Athletics in 1987, but his career was wracked by injuries beginning in 1992. He played in just 74 games in 1993-94, but by 1996, was mostly healthy and hit 52 home runs in 130 games.

"I never suspected McGwire using steroids, and with the benefit of hindsight, I probably should have," says Sandy Alderson, general manager of the Oakland A's during that period. "That wasn't the case.'

"I'm glad he addressed this issue, and have begun to restore his reputation which suffered immeasurably over the last few years. He didn't lie to Congress, and given subsequent events, that distinguishes him from others from that panel.

"I'm glad he's confronted the past, now I look forward to him back in the game."