When Mark McGwire testified before Congress on March 17, 2005, Dr. Gary Wadler, an expert at NYU on the use of steroids in sports, was sitting in the front row, right behind McGwire. When McGwire told the House Government Reform Committee, "I'm not here to talk about the past," Wadler figured McGwire's days in baseball were over.

"If you'd asked me to predict," Wadler said Monday, "I would have thought it pretty unlikely (he'd work in baseball again). Not from a legal point of view. But from what the public thinks."

Wadler, who is chairman of the board that produces the annual prohibited substances list issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency, sees many questions still swirling around McGwire but none that point to keeping him from the game.

"First of all," Wadler said, "Mark McGwire never tested positive. Andro was legal in baseball, according to the rules of baseball, and was legal with respect to the laws of the United States. I said then those laws needed to be changed. But this all occurred pre-drug testing. Now, if you test positive, you're suspended for 50 days but you still can come back to your livelihood. For a second offense, you're out 100 days but you still can come back. It's not until the third offense that you're suspended for life. You have to keep your eyes and ears open because of the history that surrounds McGwire, but this is America. And it does sound corny, but people do get second chances. People will look at him and ask questions and they're fair questions.

"Does that disqualify him from becoming a hitting coach? On what basis would it disqualify him? You can't use 2005 standards for what happened in 1998."

Wadler said that since 2005, the percentage of 12th-graders who say they have used steroids at least once has dropped significantly, but that use is "still quite pervasive. It's the good report and the bad report. It's good that it's down, it's bad that it's still going on."