Baseball Hall Slams Door on Steroid Users

Not one player will be going into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. That’s pretty strange considering we have a player who hit more home runs than any player in the game’s history and a pitcher with a whopping seven Cy Young Awards eligible for their first time, or maybe it’s not that strange at all. The 1990s are known as the “Steroid Era” in major league baseball. Hallowed records fell and careers were prolonged by the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. Baseball was certainly not the only sport this went on in. Lance Armstrong has been stripped of seven Tour de France wins and several Olympic medals, including some won by Armstrong were also forfeited. But in no other sport was the scandal so prevalent as baseball.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa had the door slammed shut, possibly permanently as none even pulled close to 40% of the 75% required to be inducted into the Hall. Next year an equally impressive and also clean crop of stars will be eligible for election, so it stands to reason they won’t gain ground next year either. With 300 game winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine along with 561 home run hitter Frank Thomas, who has never been accused of PED use on the ballot, this year’s players will have even stiffer competition.

Many have made the point that Bonds, Clemens and Sosa were still the best players of their era, with or without steroids. There is also the argument that the drugs were so prevalent that it was still a fairly level playing field and that Bonds and Clemens should be in the Hall anyway. But while nobody would argue that those two were well on their way to Hall of Fame careers long before they took anything, punishment seems appropriate.

Here is where things get tricky though. It seems that there is a movement to punish all the players from this era whether they are under suspicion or not. Nobody ever accused Mike Piazza, Curt Schiiling, Craig Biggio, or several other players on the ballot of using, but yet none of them were elected. Schilling made the point that those players as well as baseball, also turned a blind eye and therefore deserve to be punished as well. But is this really fair? How can we expect players to rat out their own teammates? That goes against everything we are taught from childhood. Nobody likes a snitch. How can we expect a player to turn on a teammate, or several teammates which would have likely resulted in his own team losing?

So while we may not have a problem with a Hall of Fame without Bonds, Clemens, Sosa or Mark McGwire, we cannot condone a Hall with no Piazza, Schilling, Bagwell or Biggio. Unless it comes out that Jeff Bagwell took drugs, does being a teammate of Ken Caminiti make him guilty by association? Because if it does then why did Barry Larkin make it last year? After all he was a player under Pete Rose.