An Andro Shot? Steroid Slam? Mark McGwire’s 62nd home run, while creating joy among true baseball fans, has sparked criticism from those who want to find a negative angle on the game. It barely cleared the left-field wall, his shortest home run of the year at just (just?) 341 feet. All those who said that the record should have an asterix started crowing that it wouldn’t have cleared the wall without a “little help.”

Bull.

Take a look at Mark McGwire, his statistics and the normal length of his home runs. In his rookie year, he hit 49 home runs, even while missing the final games of the season to be with his wife before the birth of his son. He struggled the next few years, but that was due to injury and heartache from his divorce. He emerged once again about a year before he was traded to St. Louis and started hitting tape measure shots. Also, he started looking bigger and stronger. But his fundamental characteristics of a jewelers eye at the plate and amazing bat speed have not changed.

According to McGwire, he started taking Andro only one year ago. Cynics might think he was lying. Again, nonsense. He never tried to hide his use of the pseudo-steroid and has shown no propensity to lie to the public, unlike the other big newsmaker of this year. He, by all accounts, is a great guy, who golfs with his ex-wife’s new husband, loves his son more than anything in the world and has great respect for the game and its history. He has donated money, to the tune of millions of dollars, to funds for abused children.

The average length of his home runs this season have been 426 feet, which are very, very long, considering the longest point of most major league fences is about 400 feet, and that is to dead center. Whereas McGwire’s home runs are mostly to the left, and the length there is usually about 350-380 feet. So let’s just say for the sake of argument that McGwire is aided by Andro, to the tune of 20 feet per home run. Which is a huge overestimation since the length has to do with bat speed and elevation, not brute strength. But let us just be ridiculous for a while and say that indeed it does send his dingers 20 feet further. Then his average would be 406 feet, still clearing all major league fences to left and center, not to mention right.

Any major league batting coach will say that besides his propensity to strike out, which has decreased with his years, he is a model hitter, rarely swinging at 3-0 pitches, taking pitchers deep in the count and hitting his pitch, not the pitchers. None of that can come from Andro.

And what of his increased production over the last two years? Well, the peak years for a slugger are well known to be his early 30s, when he is mature but not old. He is smack in the middle of that period and Sammy Sosa is almost there.

Others have noted that he became surly towards the media in the middle of the chase. But he has been charming of late, and it was only natural that he was getting frustrated by the constant scrutiny and attention, which he, as a shy man by nature, found it difficult to handle. But he has become friends with his rivals, the family of the man who he has been chasing and the whole country, except the cynics.

Mark McGwire is a deserving holder of the record. Those who suggest otherwise are narrow-minded, cynical and people who seek negativity in all good things. I am not the biggest McGwire fan. I am a Sammy Sosa and Chicago Cub fan, but I do know that McGwire, as well as Sosa, has dignity, charm and class to spare. I have no desire to denigrate, as a few others do, the achievement of this man. Congratulations, Mark McGwire, on a great achievement.