The National Baseball Hall of Fame - and baseball in general - got a flick on the back of the head today and it came from the bully writers who vote for Hall of Fame candidates each year.
Somehow, these writers - some of whom refused to release their ballots - deemed that no one was good enough to make the Hall.
Our family enjoyed our visit to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY on our vacation in 2007. What a special place - the town AND the hall. We enjoyed strolling through the museum and celebrating the memory of baseball ages of the past.
Sad to say, all decades aren’t remembered as fondly.
Today’s vote is clearly a commentary on the steroids era of baseball - the 1990s and early 2000s. As we move forward, it will be interesting to see if this year’s vote was a one time protest or if it will be the trend for years to come.
It wasn’t always viewed that way, of course, Back in the day, we all ooh’d and ahh’d over the towering home runs and laser-like line drives that jumped off bats from east and west in the era just after the catastrophic baseball strike of ‘94. As you may recall, that strike resulted in the cancellation of the '94 series and it turned off a lot of fans.
Baseball needed to woo back the fans and the 1998 home run chase - in which St. Louis Cardinal 1st baseman Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa went mano-a-mano in their pursuit of Roger Maris’ single season home run record. Both smashed it and then leap frogged each other until the end of the season when McGwire finished with 70 (and Sosa just behind him).
Everyone cheered - fans, players, coaches, officials, media. Baseball was back. Then, SF left fielder Barry Bonds broke McGwire’s mark, whispers began, a book came out, a bunch of ballplayers wound up testifying in Congress and…well…you know the rest of the story.
We have all heard about the steroid usage of this period. And rather than admit that we all enjoyed the 90s, some folks want to wipe it from the record books even though there are no asterisks and even though no records have been taken away.
There’s a morality clause, you see, and that allows voters to keep cheaters out of the Hall of Fame. And so Bonds and Roger Clemens both landed in the mid 30% range in their first year of eligibility. Sosa finished at 12% (and is finished). McGwire’s totals have languished for years.
Hall of Fame voters took it a step further and kept 12-time All Star catcher Mike Piazza out as well as former Houston first baseman Jeff Bagwell…just because there might be a hint that maybe they might have possibly done something.
If we take this morality thing seriously - if losing the bonus points on the ethics clause is enough to keep you out of the Hall - why, then, are the bonus points not granted to class acts like Dale Murphy who is a borderline Hall of Famer.
The standards, it seems, are not applied uniformly.
I’m not ashamed to say that I rooted for Bonds. Heck, he led my Fantasy team to a Championship in 2001. And I enjoyed watching Clemens duel John Smoltz in a playoff game in 2005 in Atlanta (the night Paul got his photo taken with the Francoeur Franks - remember them?).
We all cheered for the stars of the 90s.
It’s just only after the fact that we’ve retroactively decided their accomplishments aren’t noteworthy. Hall of Fame membership, off-limits (no purported juicers need apply).
JG
(Source: ESPN)
Originally posted 1/9/2013
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