Baseball writers in 2014 should rethink their position on condemning players from entry into the Hall of Fame because of steroids.
If players like Mark McGuire, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds did not have super-sized seasons from 1998 to 2002, major league baseball would be dead.
Via their unions, Major League Baseball players shamefully went on strike in 1994. They wanted more benefits and money. For people who are being paid multi-millions of dollars to throw and hit balls, that’s obscene in itself. The Majors were ready to bring up minor league players to replace millionaire starters until they reached an agreement. But it left a stench of greed in its wake. Fans reacted with boycotts and disinterest, causing the money pool for baseball, including television receipts, to diminish. Baseball was in serious trouble.
Along came Mark McGuire and others. Already in his 9th year, McGuire had posted home run numbers at a rate equivalent to Mickey Mantle. In 1989, He set a rookie record hitting 49 homers. Another two times before the steroid era, he hit over 50. McGuire was headed for the Hall of Fame.
In his first twelve years in baseball, Roger Clemens’ set Herculean records, ultimately winning seven Cy Young Awards, five of them prior to 1998.
Barry Bonds also posted numbers that were on track for the great Hall before the steroid era started.
It’s good that the system has since been cleaned up. However, prior to the scandal becoming public, most ball players will admit it had become a common endeavor for players using enhancement drugs, because it had become the “in thing.” The managers and coaches are just as guilty because they had to have known about the enhancements but turned a blind eye. If one team did it, they all had to do it to remain competitive. We cast shame upon the big names because they are best known, but everyone was guilty.
Now, the holier-than-thou moralists among the baseball writers have imposed punishment upon players who did what players did in an era where it was commonplace. Sure, they may have hit a few extra homers and struck out a few more batters, but these guys were already exceptional long before 1998.
Rather than punish, these men should be given a gigantic vote of thanks for resuscitating a sport that was on the decline in fans, attendance, respect and money.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is about just that: Fame. It is a tribute to those who stood above average players by doing more and better. When did the Hall morph into a shrine for moral values?
Babe Ruth was a notorious womanizing, beer drinking philanderer, yet he is worshipped to this day as a great player. Ty Cobb was a known racist. There are other enshrined baseball players who were drug addicts. Turn to football, and we’ll see convicted felon, inmate, O.J. Simpson in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Thanks to these players, baseball is thriving and so are the sports writers who rely on the excitement they provided. So let’s stop the hypocrisy in 2014 and enshrine players like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling.
And while we’re at it, it’s time to induct Pete Rose, among the all-time greats. This is another player who baseball can thank for selling multi-millions in tickets and television commercials during his 24 years with the Reds, Expos and the Phillies. Rose’s gargantuan contribution to the sport can be summed up, not only in his famous Charlie Hustle, he holds more than two dozen Major League records, including of all things, most hits (5,256) and games played (3,562.) How can that be ignored?
Rose’s guilt lay in betting on baseball games while he was a manager, though he denies ever betting on his own team. But that has nothing to do with his player credentials. Rose has paid for his sins. It’s time to forgive and induct him, and all players, who deserve the recognition.
They earned it.
Click here: Pete Rose – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Click here: Voters cheat cheater Barry Bonds out of Hall of Fame | Double-Chin Music | KUsports.com
I tend to agree with you Marshall. The baseball players who since have been found to have flaws (what one of us doesn’t), can be inducted into the H of F, and have COMPLETE bio information about what they did, and how they did it. The rest of the story so to speak. As for Pete Rose, his offense was gambling. How many of us have bet on a game? Yeah, he was a manager, but as he said, he never bet on one of his teams games. And no one has proved that he did. His greatness in baseball has nothing to do with gambling. He needs to be inducted.
There is no difference between these guys, and Lance Armstrong. He finally fessed up, and it is about time. It still does not negate his achievements, including most importantly his battle and victory over cancer, and since then, his work to fight cancer. He used steroids. So did a lot of the ball players. IT WAS DONE then, and it was secretly accepted as the way things were done. Now, fortunately, we are more informed and speak out about the use of those drugs.
Even so, with all the negative publicity about steroids, we are bombarded with TV and radio ads about testosterone for men. What is testosterone? And to be honest, after hearing all the side effects of its use, why would anyone in their right mind want to use it?
Drugs are drugs. Using them is committing suicide a bit more slowly. The tar content of marijuana should be a warning – far higher than in tobacco, & it is the same stuff that kills from cigarette use. Why would anyone in their right mind line their lungs with tar? COPD, asthma, heart problems and cancer. Wow. What a testimony for inhaling smoke!
Hi Marshall
I absolutely agree 100% on Pete Rose. Not only was he a great player but he was a pretty good guy too. I read once where when he was being traded his wife wanted to know if there was a Wal Mart where they were going. He said he’d play for a small salary because he loved the game.
I think he was a simple man with a small flaw Who isn’t?
While I agree with all of your comments, I especially agree with your recommendation about Pete Rose. Rose was in a class all by himself. And what he did as a manager should have no bearing on judging his prowess on the field as a player. He was without peer in his day. I say induct him into the Hall of Fame now!
While I don’t agree with steroid use, I think we might look at the big picture here. We applaud – apparently – adultery in the Oval Office (remember, it wasn’t sex), re-elect a president with very questionable birth records, and have numerous non-tax paying people in important government positions. These are very famous people also and certainly leave a bigger impression on the world than baseball players, and yet they are not taken from office – they are re-elected! It seems to me that the priorities are a bit skewed.
I’m against cheaters. The playing field wasn’t level for the non cheaters.
How many homers would Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams have hit ?
To me Hank AAron is still the career home run champion and Roger Maris is still the single season home run champ.
Let’s agree to disagree on this one Marshall
I’ve been a Yankee fan for more than 60 years, long enough to see Joe DiMaggio hit a home run in his first Old Timers’ Game. As Charlie Sheen said last week to Piers Morgan, juicing could have helped Barry Bonds hit a ball 20 feet farther or Roger Clemens make a pitch cross the plate a couple of miles an hour faster, but Bonds still has to connect with a ball that is coming at him at 90+ miles an hour and Clemens still has to move that ball around so that a Bonds cannot square it up. You pitched. You know what I’m talking about. This time, I couldn’t agree with you more.
Baseball and other sports are basically entertainment. Not much different from Hollywood movies with stars that are almost worshipped.
Nobody is looking into the moral character of hollywood’s elite. They are awarded honors with no regards for commiting anything we might call sins.
Why not treat baseball and sports in te same manner. Award the best and forget about who might have had an extra beer or two. I think we agree Marshall.
I wish I could say with confidence that I saw Stan Musial play. (He was the St. Louis Cardinals great slugger who just died at 92.) I probably did, because my parents often took me to Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field in the forties and fifties to see the Pirates play the other NL teams, and that would have included the Cards. Musial was special to the Sirens because he came from little Donora, Pa., also my dad’s home town. Dad told me that he had lived a couple of blocks from the Musial family’s home, and went to the same school as Stan, but never actually knew him; Dad was nine years older. (Musial was lucky to have left Donora when he did so his health wasn’t permanently damaged. The town with its factories belching fumes had another distinction: it once set the record for America’s most air-polluted town! Dad had a lifelong chronic cough that he later attributed to growing up in Donora.)
Musial was in his time as great a player as Bonds, Clemens, Sosa et al. The difference is, the batting records he set don’t need big asterisks in the record books! I need say no more.
I agree that Pete Rose should be in the Hall. However, the rest that were juiced up deserve no respect whatsoever for their records. It irks me that these cheaters should be in the Hall alongside men like Berra, Musial and Ruth.
Good story on our beloved game of baseball. I do think that Roger Clemens
should not be among the tainted by steriods crowd. It was never proven beyond
a reasonable doubt that he took steriods. We only have the word of a weasely
guy to say he did and that is not enough. I dont think Clemens took them, I
base that on the character of the man. He was a class act and a fierce player
when he was on the mound. He could bring it big time.
He was also found not guilty of perjury. That trial was a farce. Brought on by
the Democratic House, mostly because they hated Clemens because he is
a Bush guy and a Republican. That is the same bunch who gave us Ocare.
What a bunch of scumbags they were, and still are.
Bill
Scumbags are those players that used steroids and cheated their way to more hits, homers, and pitching wins. Clemens belongs in the list of scumbags if for no other reason than throwing his wife under the bus when he claimed “I didn’t use steroids my wife did.”
As far as not not being proven beyond a reasonable doubt in Clemens’ case, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and fellow team mate Andy Petit claims he saw Roger take the roids even though Clemens used the made up word he misremebered referring to Petit.