I admit that I used steroids for over a decade. However, I want to assure all my fans that I only did it to recover from crippling injuries that would have ended my career, not to inflate my majestic home run numbers. Of course, by lengthening my career, I also hit far more home runs than I would have otherwise and wound up inflating my numbers anyway. It was such a vicious circle!

If only I hadn’t played in The Steroid Era! Then all of this unpleasantness could have been avoided! I wish I had a mentor when I was younger, someone who would’ve told me that if I played in The Steroid Era, there was a very good chance I’d do steroids. Darn this era! Darn it all to heck!

Maybe you don’t know this, but when a baseball player reaches the majors, he has a choice of what era he can play in. I couldn’t play in The Deadball Era, because nobody hit homers back then and nobody wore gloves and everybody gambled. I thought about The Babe Ruth Era, but I’ve never had the stomach for bathtub gin. I thought about The Postwar Era, but you couldn’t go to the World Series unless you played for the Yankees or the Dodgers. And The Sixties weren’t an option, because the pitchers had too much of an advantage; I think the mound was two stories high back then.

I know what you’re thinking: How can you pick an era to play in? You see, MLB mastered the space-time continuum in 1975, thanks to a joint effort between NASA and Bill Lee. The principles are complicated and probably boring to the average layman. Suffice to say that the linearity of time is merely an illusion. I could have played 600 years in the future if I wanted to, in The BRX-797-0 Era, but I thought telepathic abilities would take a lot of the mystery out of life, you know?

So while I’m definitely sorry for what I did, I think most of the blame lies squarely on The Steroid Era itself. Perhaps this not-easily-defined span of time needs to do an interview with Bob Costas and explain itself, not me!

I want to thank all of the people who’ve been supportive during this difficult time. My family. Tony LaRussa. The entire St. Louis Cardinals family. And of course, all those baseball writers who urged me to unburden my soul. Your pushing, poking, and prodding gave me the strength to come clean. I’ll never forget you, but I will try to forget all of you weeping and gnashing your teeth because I just did exactly what you wanted me to.

In conclusion, I think the time has come to turn the page and once again start blaming the big black guy for all this unpleasantness.