Yount not party to Big Mac attack

A few posters here have bandied Yount’s name about as a ‘trailblazer’ in the use of enhancements.  Given that this idea exists I thought these comments might be of interest.

Mark McGwire has taken a lot of broadsides since his partial admission on steroid use, with some of the most severe attacks coming from former players.

Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk, for example, excoriated McGwire in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, saying, among other things, that Big Mac’s mea culpa was “a crock.”

But another ex-player with a Cooperstown bust isn’t willing to come inside with the Fisk heat.

“A number of guys have that attitude,” Robin Yount said by phone from his Arizona home. “I would like to know what they would’ve done if they were in that same boat.”

Like Fisk, Yount played almost his entire career outside the Steroid Era, which began, depending on the historian, somewhere between the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Had steroids been readily available when he played, Yount could not say what he would’ve done.

“I’ll be very honest,” Yount said. “In the fact that there was no testing and if there were benefits from it, it would have been very difficult.

“Without testing in place, you would’ve almost been forced to do it to keep up.”

So there would’ve been some tough decisions inside the Brewers clubhouse had Bambi’s Bombers and Harvey’s Wallbangers been born a decade or so later?

“There is no doubt,” the 54-year-old Yount said. “It wouldn’t have been an easy decision. Or maybe it would’ve been an easy decision, for that matter. You just would’ve had to do it to keep up.

“I’m glad that I didn’t have to make that call because it would have been a very difficult decision to decide whether to do it or not.”