Former Cub Steve Trachsel somewhat famously gave up Mark McGwire's 62nd home run in 1998 - along with 347 other homers to 270 other players over 16 seasons.

Now that McGwire is back in the news, Trachsel sounds like an absolutist on baseball records in the steroid era when he tells Bob Klapisch:

“I’m not surprised Mark said it,” Trachsel said. “I mean, we all suspected it. We all knew it. Now you have to say everything he ever did was tainted. All of it.”

And:

Hall of Fame voters ultimately will decide what to make of this flip-flop. But the more pressing question is: In retrospect, how many of those 583 career home runs can we trust? “None,” Trachsel said bluntly. “To me, once you admit you did steroids, you can’t decide anymore [which were real].”

(click "read more" for the rest of the article)

OK, we'll play along. I'm guessing Trachsel also believes Sammy Sosa used performance-enhancing substances. If so, I'm guessing he can't "trust" any of Sosa's achievements - and therefore those are "tainted," too. (Not to pick on Sosa, as we could pick on any number of Trachsel's teammates from the Cubs, Blue Jays, Mets and Orioles.)

If so, does that "taint" then spread to some of Trachsel's 60 wins when he was Sosa's teammate in Chicago? For example, Sosa hit four home runs, drove in 17 and scored 11 runs in the career-high 15 games that Trachsel was credited with the win in 1998 alone. That includes all six runs in a 6-2 win over Arizona on July 27.

In short, if numbers put up by McGwire, Sosa, A-Rod, Gagne and countless others are "tainted," then the achievements of their teammates who benefited from those monster years must be suspect, too.

(Also in the story, Trachsel claims McGwire didn't like Sosa, for those of you interested in interpersonal relationships among former baseball players.)