The Hall of Fame question

If there's one topic I've purposely avoided in the past month or so, it's the Mark McGwire Hall of Fame topic. Why have I avoided it? Because in all honesty, it's an incredibly in depth ethical question that most people don't give the thought to it that they should and I get sick of reading half assed columns fired off about why if Mac might've used steroids he shouldn't get into the Hall when we all know too well that these very same people will vote for Barry Bonds in seven years or whenever he becomes eligible. But I'm finally reading some decent and interesting stuff on it (among that is the Bill Simmons article I'll talk about later, some stuff in SI I'll talk about later, and this article by Gwen Knapp in the SF Chronicle sent to me by reader Eric like a month ago which I won't talk about later, but it's a good read and a well reasoned point so you should check it out if you've got the chance anyways), so I'm finally going to give my own two cents worth on it.

The reason it's been so tough to get together a post about this topic is because of how complex the subject is. I think steroid use in baseball, or in any sport for that matter, is wrong. Still, I think that with the way baseball handles things right now, McGwire should probably be in the Hall of Fame. Does that make me a hypocrite? Does that make my statement that steroid usage in sports is wrong meaningless? It probably does. I don't care. You cannot hold Mark McGwire out of the Hall of Fame in January, then recognize Barry Bonds for breaking the all-time home run record in August. And baseball will recognize Bonds, make no mistake about it.

Here's my problem: you can't condemn just McGwire for what an entire era's worth of people did. I'm probably going to get ripped to shreds for saying this, but can you say with absolute 100% certainty that Cal Ripken Jr. didn't use steroids? No, you can't. What about Tony Gwynn? He sure didn't look like a juicer but hey, did Matt Lawton or Juan Rincon? Don't get me wrong, I'm not pointing a finger at Ripken or Gwynn by any means, but if we're going to condemn one guy for some roundabout statements and circumstantial evidence, we've got to condemn the whole era.

The thing that really irks me about the whole thing is that McGwire, the guy who undoubtedly did more for the game than any steroid user in history (Bill Simmons actually has a very good column up about this on Page 2), is going to be the scapegoat for something that hundreds of players did in the 90s and 00s. I say this over and over again, but Barry Bonds is going to be in the Hall of Fame and people are going to claim "his numbers up until 1998 made him Hall worthy anyways." I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. Not that his numbers weren't Hall worthy from '86 to '98, because they were. But to draw an arbitrary line in a player's career and say that no matter what happens after it, they were a Hall of Famer before it is a load of crap. Jim Rice had 12 good years and it hasn't been enough for him and I don't think that it should be. We can't extrapolate out what Bonds would've done from '98 through whenever and just assume that it would've been good enough with those first 12 years to make him a Hall of Famer, it's not even logical to do something like that. Hey, Nomar Garciaparra was awesome until injuries derailed his career, maybe he's a Hall of Famer too. McGwire is the scapegoat now because Caminiti and Canseco weren't good enough to be the scapegoats, and because if he's held out as the example people won't feel bad about themselves when they vote for Bonds because they've already made one pariah from the whole steroid situation.

Another question to ask is, "Why do we care?" Deadspin points out again and again that when Shawne Merriman, arguably the most dominant defensive player in the NFL this year, fails a steroid test no one gives two shits about the whole thing. If you still read SI, there's an article in the Scorecard this week about Shawne Merriman failing a steroid test and still making the Pro Bowl this year. Why do baseball fans care? Simmons points out that baseball players have been cheating for decades and it's ignored in most cases (see: Rogers, Kenny), but somehow this cheating is "bad cheating." One of my all-time favorite baseball story is Dock Ellis and the LSD induced no-hitter (not that LSD made pitching a no hitter easier). Still, there is something about using illegal drugs to enhance a player's performance that just feels dirtier than rubbing vaseline on a ball or putting too much pine tar on your bat. One of the beauties of baseball is that for every Ken Griffey Jr. that was born to play the game, there's a Freddy Sanchez that was born to do anything but play baseball and he's still found a way into the spotlight. The thought of rampant steroid usage in the league ruins that kind of image and I understand why people care about that, because really, I feel the same way.

Baseball also has an egregious double standard for its superstars when it comes to things like this. There is a well researched book dedicated to Bonds' steroid mis-dealings that most people ignore, but McGwire, who without 1998 and 1999 (or we'll say with "normal seasons" in 1998 and 1999) would be a boderline case for the Hall, is being punished for unhelpful testimony during the Congressional hearings, a bottle of Andro in his locker that he admitted was Andro because there was nothing wrong with it being there at the time (it wasn't even illegal), and some chapters in a book by Jose freaking Canseco. Rafael Palmiero, a guy who plenty of people were going to argue against as a Hall of Famer because of his certain lack of, well, we'll call it "Jeter-osity," despite his 500 homers and 3,000 hits, is likely out of Hall consideration forever because of his failed drug test, but if Roger Clemens showed up on the list of players that failed the anonymous tests in 2003 do you honestly believe people would keep him out of the Hall? I don't.

But the real question is what to do about the whole thing. While it's unfair to single out one scapegoat, it's equally unfair to place a blockade on electing players who played the majority of their careers from, say, '85 through '03, to the Hall because it's not right to condemn an innocent player (say a Ripken or a Gwynn) for the sins of others. Most of all, it's impossible to go back into history and decide who was a steroid user and who wasn't when the simple fact is that no one tested for steroids with repercussions until 2004. That means that we can be fairly certain that steroid usage went unchecked close to 20 years in the majors. Are we taking Ken Caminiti's MVP award away? No. And so they can't keep McGwire out of the Hall of Fame, either. Baseball has dug their own grave on this one, now they have to lie in it. No one is going to forget that any of this happened. There are already casualties; Caminiti is dead, Palmiero is probably blackballed from the Hall, Bonds and McGwire will forever be linked to this no matter how many homers Bonds hits, whispers will follow Clemens forever, and every single Ryan Howard and Albert Pujols will be viewed with a cautious eye for the next twenty years. But to punish one player on whom they don't have any more real evidence than they do on anyone else (and they actually have considerably less evidence against than other players) from the era is wrong and it creates a dangerous double standard for the future.