There are fans of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club and then there are rabid, foaming-at-the mouth fans of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club. A third category might be called “lukewarm” Cardinals fans. Those who do not fit into either of the first two categories of fans fall into this one and, for the most part, are content.

Of course there are people who are not fans of the St. Louis Cardinals and in fact loathe the St. Louis Cardinals, but most of them live in Chicago and can easily be contained in the confines of Wrigley Field or somewhere nearby. Oh, one or two escape now and then, but their influence in Cardinal Land is insignificant and they’re considered a harmless, if amusing, minority.

Along with fans who may fall into any of the above categories — and indifferent observers — I am somewhat mystified by all the brouhaha surrounding former Cardinal Mark McGwire’s tearful admission that he used performance enhancing drugs to break the single season home run record in 1998. It couldn’t have come as a big surprise to anyone. Well, maybe with the exception of an apparently clueless Tony LaRussa.

If I had to categorize my status as a Cardinal fan, I most likely would fall into that “lukewarm” category. However, after it appeared that McGwire was on his way to breaking the home run record, in a race with the Cubs Sammy Sosa during the 1998 season, I watched every game and witnessed that magic 70th home run. Performance enhancing pharmaceuticals were really not an issue then, or at least not a big issue yet, and I admired McGwire not only for his athleticism but for his overall demeanor. He just came across as a standup, all right guy.

Sadly, admiration and respect for McGwire diminished significantly after he was called to testify before a Congressional Committee on March 17, 2005. Not that he admitted anything then, at least not in so many words. But his reply “I’m not here to talk about the past” to almost every question he was asked by the House Government Reform Committee spoke volumes as his reputation vanished in the span of 15 minutes.

While McGwire was not answering, I remained puzzled as to why a Congressional Committee was spending time and tax dollars investigating the use of performance enhancing drugs among professional athletes. Surely, Congress had more pressing matters of government to attend to than convening a committee to ask former and current players if they used steroids. I thought that fell into the province of league officials, but maybe they just weren’t doing their jobs.

Fans, former players and sports columnists seem about evenly divided over whether or not McGwire should be allowed back into baseball as a batting coach, under the aforementioned clueless Tony LaRussa. Tony, by the way, said he was unaware of any steroid use before McGwire fessed up earlier this month, which sounds strange considering baseball managers are expected to have their fingers on the pulse of the club they manage.

It also struck me as strange that a bunch of fans gave McGwire a standing ovation when he appeared at a public function after he admitted using steroids. That seems like giving the burglar who broke into your house and stole your flat screen TV a standing ovation when he walks into the courtroom. McGwire, after all, stole not just from Cardinal fans but from all baseball fans.

“The strongest thing that baseball has going for it today are its yesterdays,” said the late Lawrence Ritter, a writer who specialized in baseball and economics. I guess with the huge salaries some players receive today, writing about baseball in conjunction with economics is not all that unusual.

As at best a lukewarm fan, I don’t really care one way or the other that McGwire is back in the Cardinal organization. I do hope that he hasn’t made cynics out of all of us and that we’re not just sitting around waiting for the next crushing baseball scandal, or any sports scandal, to disillusion us. Congress provides more than enough disillusionment, thank you.

“If the people don’t want to come out to the park, nobody’s going to stop ‘em.” — Yogi Berra