Reclusive McGwire should stay in hiding

The invisible man has reappeared. He's back in baseball, back where he always belonged, back where he had made a name for himself - a name tarnished now, though.

His return was preordained -- really. Few men with high profiles walk away from the game and leave it in their rearview mirror. And Mark McGwire was hardly different. He was a star, after all; stars can't live without the attention and the adulation that stardom brings.

And not many athletes were as famous as Mark McGwire. Not many men are as infamous as Mark McGwire either.

What fame he had has long since eroded, washed away in a flood of allegations about his use of steroids.

His assault on Roger Maris' record for homers during the summer of 1998 riveted the sports world. He and Sammy Sosa, a partner in the chase, were nightly fixtures on sports shows.

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Story of the Year? Only Tiger can be No. 1

Sports editors called steroids the biggest story of 2009. Theirs, of course, was an intriguing choice last week, but it was a choice that, frankly, seemed out of step with the prevailing trend.

For the steroids story is as passé as disco dancing and polyester bell-bottoms. Steroids might have been a headline-grabber, oh, two or three years ago, but at this point in a tale of sports figures' going bad, the story doesn't resonate; it's a tired report that soon will have its eulogy read.

In sports and in American pop culture, the story of 2009 was Tiger. Yes, it was the year of the Tiger -- as in golfer Tiger Woods.

What other story proved bigger?

For Tiger's story was a profile of what has been the undoing of sports today: greed and privilege. His story speaks to the entitlements stars have come to demand.

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Black mark remains on silent McGwire

He's supposedly coming back from his self-imposed hell, a place far removed from the limelight, the TV commercials and the public adulation he enjoyed during most of his baseball career. He went there to get away from his final seasons, but he couldn't shake free of those years or the rumors that trailed him there.

Whoever figured Mark McGwire would return?

He is coming back, though. He's coming back to baseball as manager Tony La Russa's hitting coach with the Cardinals, which causes hell for Major League Baseball.

League officials know what McGwire's return will mean: more talk about steroids. They would prefer that he stayed where he was -- his career in the netherworld of baseball, a place where Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmeiro took their careers.

It's hard to resurrect careers like theirs from the dead. Just ask Pete Rose. They should only be resurrected when the questions that men like McGwire and Rose ran away from have been answered. Those questions can't still be floating high in the air like a hanging curveball.

They are with McGwire.

The game knows no more about McGwire and his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs today than it did when he chose to retire in 2002. He could have cleared up those suspicions long ago. He should do so now before he puts on a uniform again.

He should sit down in front of Larry King or Peter Gammons or Oprah Winfrey and tell the baseball world what he refused to tell Congress: Did he or didn't he?

Confess his sins and the truth sets him free.

An Oprah moment won't rehabilitate McGwire's image; it would be a start. His silence about 'roids has sullied the reputation he once had. It has also cost him induction into Cooperstown, just as Rose's lying about betting on baseball cost him his.

Rose has remained an outsider; he has not been allowed to participate in the sport he helped to prosper.

McGwire, who'll reportedly replace Hal McRae, is getting back inside the game, except in the minds of those who care about the sanctity of it. He tainted their records, baseball purists say. They hold a grudge, too.

For his part, McGwire seems not to care what they think. Had he cared, he would have kept his pumped-up biceps in retirement. He would not have reopened a discussion that had, in the main, been quiet since Manny Ramirez sat out 50 games earlier this season for testing positive for PED.

On the eve of the World Series, baseball needed the public's attention on McGwire like the NBA needed its referees on strike. In October, attention should be on the World Series and not on the hiring of a hitting coach who needs to address his past.

Timing is everything, and McGwire could have orchestrated his return to baseball to minimize the damage it will do to the game. He'd done enough to ruin the sport already.

Staying or going? Say something, LeBron ...

Staying or going, I wish LeBron James would say.

Those words will be pulling at James, as they did last season, deep into the coming NBA season like a tugboat. He keeps evading questions about what his intentions are as if he were Osama bin Laden.

James had a chance to put the question to bed last month when he premiered his film at a convention in Tampa. He didn’t.

He left Tampa with his future as a Cavalier just as uncertain as ever. Yeah, yeah, Northeast Ohio has been good to him, he claims. He loves it here; these are his people; this is his town; this is his team. He says so all the time.

In New York City tomorrow, James debuts his book "Shooting Stars" -- an as-told-to autobiography of his rise from Akron, Ohio, to global fame -- in an NBA mega-market that longs for a star to match Kobe Bryant. James, a free agent after next season, is the city's target, and he does nothing to dispel the notion.

But if he prefers the night lights of Broadway, just so say; end this maddening guessing game. Take his global aspirations to a market that can sate it. If it's not Cleveland, the region can live without him.

James knows the Knicks or the Nets, by NBA rules, can't pay him as much as the Cavaliers can. Even if one of those teams could, no community can lavish as much love on him as Northeast Ohio does. He’s the region's prodigal son, and the community would like nothing better, aside from the Browns winning the Super Bowl, than to see James stay beyond the 2009-10 season.

All the reasons for him staying here make sense. He’s all he can be here: rich, famous and an untouchable brand, an icon. He’s the face of a region that has basked in his worldwide stature.

People in Cleveland grow impatient. They say James owes them an answer, because the longer he holds off without giving one, they fear he’ll break their hearts as Jim Thome, Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez did when they left for a bigger stage.

What stage can be big enough for a global personality like James?

He would be ungodly famous even if he played in Boise, Idaho. He doesn’t need Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles or Miami to remain the league’s pinup boy. Yet maybe all the kind words James says about his hometown aren’t really as important to him as standing in Madison Square Garden and hearing New Yorkers cheer his play.