I’m a hardliner here: these guys should be in the Hall of Fame (I mean, assuming they deserve it in the first place). If it’s a designation that Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds don’t receive, then it’s no longer a designation of greatness. It becomes entirely meaningless.
I think that if, in some unspecified number of years, the best players of the 1990-2010 era are not in the “real” Hall of Fame, someone, somewhere, will create a new Hall - and the old one will lose what credibility and draw it has remaining.
I think that the effect of PEDs in baseball is greatly overrated anyway. While steroids gave Bonds added muscle, that was only a small part of what let him hit 70 dingers - no PEDs on earth improve eyesight, hand-eye coordination, reflexes and genuine skill. Haven’t the sachem estimated that his bulk only gave him 4-5 of those homers, at most, by getting marginal hits a few feet further and over the wall? A hit that soars into the upper deck would have still been a homer, if a less impressive one, and everything but the extra muscle is what made it.
PEDs in the endurance sports, like running and bicycling, and pure-muscle sports, like football (linemen, not so much backs) are far more significant. They really do change the game. Baseball… not as much as cut balls and corked bats.
Suspected, no. One can suspect anyone who played in the 90s.
Proven, though, – yes.
It’s like keeping Joe Jackson out of the hall. He admitted cheating and is still barred (people try to rationalize it, but that doesn’t wash). Other people have been accused of throwing games and betting on the sport (Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, for instance), but there was no evidence to back up the charges, so they’re innocent until proven guilty.
Joe Jackson did not admit cheating. He admitted to engaging in a conspiracy to throw games. That’s not “cheating,” it’s something completely different and far, far worse.
I voted yes. Things like spitballs and sliding with the cleats up are minor issues. The players police the rough stuff pretty well, if you cut a second baseman up with a slide, you get drilled next time you come up.
With the PEDs, I think you have to figure out best you can what their career would have been like without the drugs. In the case of Bonds, he went from a pretty scrawny guy to a slab of beef and I doubt he hits anywhere near the number of homers without being roided up. I doubt Clemens would have been able to generate nearly as much heat without the dope. I say, keep them out.
But the “scrawny” Bonds had already won 3 MVPs with 7 Silver Sluggers and 7 GGs, so he was HOF worthy before his head got the size of a watermelon. And Clemens won 192 games in Boston with 3 CY’s and an MVP, before he slipped into “The twilight of his career” at Toronto, NY and Houston. No doubt both would have been HOFers, even if they played out the last 8 years of their careers in comparative mediocrity.
Only problem is that we don’t know exactly when they used PEDs – maybe they used some early and only went into a regular, serious regimen later on.
So, they let every voter make up their own determination, right or wrong, and I really could give two hoots if they get treated unfairly by some writers. If nothing else comes out, they’ll eventually get in, but until that time, let them sweat it out.
I think it’s quite possible that Gaylord Perry’s spitball helped him every bit as much as steroids did the current “cheaters”. And what he was doing was actually against the rules. Sliding with cleats up could ruin someone’s career. I don’t see how either of these is minor compared to steroids.
Not to mention that between 1990 and 1995, he led the league in OBP four times, slugging three times and OPS five times. His stats are sick right from the beginning of his career.
Who exactly, among the players currently eligible for the Hall, are proven juicers? McGwire (admitted) and maybe Bonds (IIRC, he testified that he used the cream and the clear, believing the latter was flaxseed oil.)
Well Palmeiro has just left, but next year Gary Sheffield comes aboard, and although Clemens fall short of being a proven user, there’s enough evidence that’s been presented, that I don’t consider it unreasonable to wait and see what shakes out.
Voters understand that although they vote someone in, they can’t vote someone out.
True. But I think that both should be in the HOF anyway. Rose’s ‘issues’ had nothing to do with his playing career, and Shoeless Joe got railroaded.
I voted ‘no’. The players using PEDs didn’t do so in a vacuum; the doped up hitters were playing against doped up pitchers and vice-versa. The ones who were stars would still have been stars if everyone had been ‘clean’.
No, they were excellent players who did something else. I think its far more egregious to allow someone who’s stats are good because they cheated than to allow someone who used their good stats to make an additional profit.
Not everyone used PEDs, and those that didn’t were at some disadvantage unless they wanted to cheat, break the law and violate MLB rules. Professionals, that have trained their whole lives to get a job should not be put in that position.
Not everyone that used PEDs used them to the same degree. A player that used PEDs in OTC supplements during one offseason or to recover from an injury is a different case than someone like ARod or Bonds who had an hour by hour PED regimen.
The careers of clean players, at all levels, were adversely affected by those that used. I’ve talked with former college players from the 90s who told of their top pitchers using PEDs on says when MLB scouts were in the stands, and of how it added 4 mph to his fastball and got them over the 90 mph barrier. Ken Caminitti won the NL MVP in 1996, and, before his death, he attributed much of his success to PEDs. Mike Piazza finished 2nd in the MVP that year. Will missing out on the MVP be the difference in whether or not Piazza gets into the Hall.
We can’t go back and rewrite the record books. We can’t play “what if” with any accuracy. What we can do is punish those that were caught, and make the penalty severe enough to alter the risk/reward ratio to MLB stars. I have no problem with keeping players like Bonds, Clemens and ARod out of the HOF until they’re too old to make money off of it.
If everything Anthony Bosch said on 60 Minutes last night is true, then there is little reason to have faith in the random testing program. Part of A-Rod’s regimen was fine-tuned to the smallest time frame. He was doping for the actual game, day by day, using oral testosterone lozenges. According to Bosch, even if Rodriguez was tested after the game he would pass.
Bosch mentioned one thing about the actual urine test I’ve never heard before. He advised Rodriguez to capture only the “middle” of his stream in the cup. Bosch claimed the beginning and end of the urination stream containg most of the metabolites.
Bosch is a shady character, but I didn’t think he was lying.
I’d heard it before, at least the part of the beginning of the stream having more metabolites than the middle. The part about the end having more was new to me, and doesn’t quite make sense.
It’s interesting to note that all of those suspended last August, in connection with Biogenisis bust had not failed tests. I’m guessing it has more to do with going by a detailed schedule, geared to the fact that testing occurs right after the game.
I watched the 60 Minutes interview and I was hoping Bosch would be asked why Manny Ramirez kept on failing tests. Was it just a case of “Manny being Manny?” Or had Bosch just come up with better ways of passing tests.
In any event, if Bosch is not a complete bull-sh tter, then his info is valuable to MLB re: their testing procedures. Maybe random testing BEFORE games.
Note that ARod will continue to be tested during his suspension.
