I've written in the past about how I will vote for Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, etc. for the Hall of Fame; in trying to find a consistent standard, I'm going to vote for the best players of the generation, in the belief that the use of steroids was so widespread, involving hundreds of players, that the playing field was essentially level.
My quandary is this: How can I withhold a vote for McGwire while voting for a half-dozen to a dozen other players from the era who I absolutely believe took steroids, while not having any proof? I've examined the list of major awards since 1988, and think that 75 to 80 percent were won with the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
The only difference between McGwire and many other stars from the generation is that McGwire hit more homers, and got the congressional subpoena.
A lot of readers have e-mailed in relation to McGwire, in particular, that this is like letting a bank robber get away because you can't catch all crooks.
But the analogy is imprecise for this reason: The institution of baseball -- the bank, as it were -- was complicit in the crime.
The union, Major League Baseball, etc., effectively looked the other way for 10 to 15 years while the steroid vault was raided over and over again, and everybody shared in the spoils of what the juiced era wrought. The steroid-users cashed in, but so did the rest of baseball, riding on the backs of McGwire and Sammy Sosa a mere 10 years after the first steroid accusations popped up in the sport.
So because of this context, to suddenly apply retroactive morality in the case is absurd. If it's an embarrassment for baseball to have Mark McGwire inducted into the Hall of Fame, well, the institution of baseball earned it.
I'll draw an analogy of my own, although I don't mean to equate nation-building with hitting home runs. Some of our first presidents were slave owners, and any such thing now, in the 21st century, would be beyond horrible, worthy of vigorous indictment. However, in the context of the times, it was not unusual for land owners from the South to buy and sell slaves.
So do we now, in retrospect, disavow all that Thomas Jefferson accomplished? Or George Washington? Do we ignore the greatness of Abraham Lincoln -- who, to be clear, did not own slaves -- for some of the racist phrases attributed to him by history?
I do think it would be a good idea for the Hall of Fame to separate the plaques from different eras, with some kind of notation that in the '90s and early in the 21st century, it is believed that the use of steroids was rampant. That would help distinguish the accomplishments of Aaron, Mays, Ruth and Foxx from others, and help explain, for future generations, the incredible spike in statistics. (To repeat, I feel that I did a terrible job, as a beat writer, in covering this issue).
Should Mark McGwire be Voted In The HOF ?
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Originally Posted by bigboydan
