On more than one occasion after a night of some “social” drinking in high school, I would stumble home and try to convince my mom nothing was wrong. Despite my slurred speech, my stumbling, and the stench of barley and hops, I still lied. At that point in my life, I was the kind of guy who still lied when his hand was caught in the proverbial cookie jar. After a stern talking to the next day and the inevitable grounding, I would eventually confess to my indiscretions. Her response was often something along the lines of, “DUH.”

After hearing that retired baseball player Mark McGwire finally admitted to the use of steroids during his playing days, I’m beginning to think that now I know how my mom felt. In that magical year of 1998 when McGwire and Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa kept us glued to the TV to watch which one would smash Roger Maris’ record first, it turns out that it was all a sham. And, to some extent, shame on us. Just about anyone could tell that McGwire and Sosa bulked up just a little bit too much in too short a period of time. While I understand that the weight room can increase muscle mass, I can’t think of anything (legal, anyways) that would increase the cranium size of a human or the size of a foot. Barry Bonds, the Home Run King, did just that when his cap size increased from 7 1/8 to 7 ¾ and his foot grew from a size 10 ½ to 13. Maybe when it seems like something is too good to be true, it’s false.

What is it about us that makes it so difficult to admit that we messed up? In retrospect, my biggest mistake back in high school wasn’t the drinking that I had been doing, but all the lying I did to cover it up. With these celebrities in the limelight, they could do a lot of good by showing kids the proper way to handle oneself when they make a mistake.