Matheny Speaks Out

According to Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mike Matheny is concerned about Jose Canseco's book and the implications it makes towards former teammate Mark McGwire. He was quoted as saying the following: "I hate that. It's tough to watch. I'm a big fan of Mark's. I know how hard he worked to achieve what he accomplished and now only one person is trying to destroy all of it. With what Canseco says, it casts all players in a bad light. My home runs shouldn't be in question, but now, all of us are being looked at as to whether or not what we did is [earned], and that's not right."

You're right, Mike: no one would ever think you were on steroids. In fact, I'm sure no one has ever looked up his career home runs to see if he might have been under the influence of steroids, or for any other reason. But after doing a bit of research, I'm not so sure he's clean. After all, he has twice in his career hit as many as eight dingers in a season, and after 3,274 at-bats, he does have 51 home runs. Come to think of it, that is a little bit suspicious. If you do the math on that one, that's a homer every 64 at-bats. That's incredible! Put it this way: in Benny Agbayani's phenomenal 1999 season, he averaged a home run just under every 20 at-bats. So Mike Matheny is roughly a third of the power hitter Benny Agbayani was. Without a doubt, people are going to start whispering about this. I don't know how Mike's name hasn't come up yet, but it's bound to soon with this new evidence.

No hurler in his right mind would
pitch to Benny Agbayani.

If he has used steroids at any point, it would be embarrassing for him to be found out. Bonds, Giambi, Canseco, Caminiti? At least they enjoyed varying degrees of success from their usage. How embarrassing would it be to have your name tarnished forever because of steroid use with 50 career home runs? Without further ado, I present to you the All-Steroid Team: one player at each position from the last 10 years with: 1) no more than a homer every fifty at bats and 2) no more than 100 career home runs. If any of these players used steroids, they should come forward now. It would prove using them isn't cheating quite as badly as people think it is.

C - Mike Matheny (1994 - Present)
1 homer / 64 AB
51 career homers

1B - Hall Morris (1988 - 2000)
1 homer / 53 AB
76 career homers

2B - Mark Lemke (1988 - 1998)
1 homer / 101 AB
32 career homers

3B - Bill Spiers (1989 - 2001)
1 homer / 92 AB
37 career homers

SS - Rey Sanchez (1991 - Present)
1 homer / 320 AB
15 career homers

LF - Rich Amaral (1991 - 2000)
1 homer / 163 AB
11 career homers

CF - Otis Nixon (1983 - 1999)
1 homer / 465 AB
11 career homers

RF - Luis Polonia (1987 - 2000)
1 homer / 134 AB
36 career homers

In this fearsome lineup, Matheny and his magic bat would
probably occupy the clean-up spot.