With all due respect to Quarterback Roulette here in the Bay Area, the stealth big story of the day is a report that Mark McGwire is ready to become a public figure again.
So with Tony La Russa re-upping in St. Louis to manage the Cardinals for his 32nd year as a major-league skipper (meaning he has done so for nearly half his life), now comes news that McGwire will replace Hal McRae as hitting coach.
This is fascinating news, as it essentially means that McGwire has decided to end his self-exile from public life, go through the period of self-flagellation demanded by the nation and its high-minded representatives, and then return to the game he once loved and perhaps loves again.
It is good news too. McGwire has paid as high a price in shame as anyone in baseball. Debate his guilt all you wish, but nobody else has done eight years under the covers, even if it was self-imposed.
Of course, itmeans a perp walk to a news conference in which McGwire will have to say something more substantive than what he did with those crack politicians or be hectored for months afterward. That had always been La Russa's publicly stated advice to him, and tosign on with the manager McGwire would appear to be ready to do so now.
So if McGwire can make peace with the outside world, it seems time to let the outside world make its peace with him.
(E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit the San Francisco Chronicle


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