A big thunderbolt of news arrived this week: Mark McGwire used steroids.

In other developments, water is wet, Grant is buried in Grant’s Tomb and it gets cold in the wintertime.

In all seriousness, however. McGwire’s “revelation” is pretty anticlimactic. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that Big Mac was on the juice.

For any pure baseball fan, the idea that both McGwire and ex-Cub star Sammy Sosa are cheaters is a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

The thought that the unforgettable 1998 season was fueled by performance-enhancing drugs is, itself, a maajor bummer.

Like many baseball fans, I was disillusioned by the lockout in 1994. It took me a long time to get over that whole dirty deal.

The McGwire-Sosa home run chase did it for me. I was working in Chicago at the time, and it really was a magical time.

Driving around in between assignments on hot Midwest summer evenings, my car radio was glued to WGN — the Cubs’ flagship station. I wanted to hear Sammy go yard.

And leave the yard he did, with regularity, launching ball after ball onto Waveland Avenue beyond the ivy-covered wall in left field at Wrigley.

As a Cub fan, I’d pump my fist and let out a yell for every Sosa homer. But I sort of rooted for McGwire, too. It was a mini-pennant race, and once they both surpassed Roger Maris, it became a matter of who would set the new record.

And now, we know it was all a fraud. How disappointing.

Sosa hasn’t come clean yet — but the dominoes are falling. Sosa’s denials rang just as hollow as McGwire’s.

And with his sorry corked bat affair during the cursed 2003 season, we already know Sosa is a cheater.

Going back to McGwire, his tearful interview with Bob Costas the other night was a bit underwhelming.

I don’t buy the crocodile tears; I don’t buy the excuses; I don’t buy one bit of this too-little, too-late charade.

Anyone who has kids knows the difference between “I’m sorry” and “I’m sorry I got caught.”

McGwire’s belated “mea culpa” falls into the latter category for me.

Let’s face it: McGwire only came clean now because he reports to spring training in a few weeks as the Cardinals’ batting coach. The media horde would have been after McGwire all day every day.

So he took the easy way out, or so he thinks. A written statement released to the Associated Press; an interview on Major League Baseball’s offi cial network.

But my sportswriting brethren aren’t going to be so easily placated. Big Mac can expect to be dogged by these questions for the rest of his days. And he should be.

Does McGwire deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Heck, no. And neither do Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, or any other cheaters.

McGwire and his cohorts have done irreparable damage to the game we love so much. Their actions have tainted, by association, any player who toiled during what will forever be known as “the steroid era.”

They should pay a price for that.

Contact sports editor David Vantress at 997-3111, ext. 14 or via email at dvantress@yourdailyjournal.com.