Turnover COULD work in Clemens’ favor, but there’s no chance he can ever put on a show of crocodile tears and remorse, because (like Pete Rose) he’s spent far too much time loudly and angrily insisting that he’s 100% innocent.
I see the HOF either entirely replacing the BBWAA or at least supplementing the vote with a committee of their own. A Hall of Fame without Clemens and Bonds is just an incredibly stupid idea.
He just got huge in his 40’s. Happens all the time. Oh wait…
Thing is, it’s not as if a flabby, middle-aged couch potato (like me) could just swallow a few pills and develop huge muslces. That’s not how steroids work. Steroids work by helping people recover quicker, which means in turn that they can work HARDER.
It means that a guy can spend MORE time in the weight room. It means he can come back and pitch effectively on short rest.
Tht’s one reason that even GUILTY guys accused of steroid use often act outraged. The way they see it, they, the “cheaters”, have been working HARDER than the “honest” guys who don’t use steroids.
In his later years with the Red Sox, Roger Clemsn was noticeably declining, but even then, it’s NOT as if he was always terrible. Sometimes, he could still throw the ball 95 MPH as he did in 1986. What changed was that, as he aged, he could no longer do that reliably every 4 or 5 days! He’d have a great game, tossing 8 innings of 4 hit shutout ball… but he’d still be tired by the time of his next start, and would get shelled by the next team he faced.
THAT’S where steroids came in. They allowed him to recover quickly so that he could keep throwing like the young Clemens every 5th day.
That’s where Clemens was a bit different from his fellow cheater, Barry Bonds. Young Barry had ALWAYS been a great hitter, but he’d NEVER been a big-time home run hitter. Steroids allowed Barry Bonds to start doing something he’d NEVER done before. Clemens DIDN’T start doing something he’d never done before- he just reverted to the Roger we all remembered, but hadn’t seen in a few years.
Is this a bad thing? Would steroids have the onus they have if the only effect they had was faster healing? Wouldn’t a drug like that be treated as a good (great?) thing? That would still have an enormous impact, but it sure wouldn’t be considered the greatest evil ever. It might be the opposite.
Arguably he was better, and I don’t see why this distinction is important. Bonds and Clemens both did things they would not ordinarily have been capable of doing- Clemens because he was older and had lost a few miles off his fastball, Bonds because he was too good an all around hitter and didn’t have as much power as other guys (most of whom were also juicing). Both of them found steroids extremely helpful because they allowed them to recover faster and more easily put on a ton of muscle.
I agree with everything you’re saying. My only point in my previous comment was the sheer obviousness of Clemens’ steroid use just based on his physical appearance alone. A man in his late 30’s and early 40’s, whose frame previously never appeared to hold too much muscle, isn’t going to sudden bulk up in rapid fashion and turn into a virtual muscle machine with no neck just based on a hard work ethic and protein shakes.
QUite true- my only point was that, while BOTH Clemens and Bonds were undoubtedly cheating, the results were a bit different.
When a guy starts doing something he’s never done before, it stands out! Young Barry Bonds WAS a skinny guy who hit 28-30 homers a year. Young Roger Clemens was a pretty big guy who threw the ball hard and struck out 200+ batters every year.
When a skinny guy who’s never been a big power hitter gets muscular and starts hitting tape measure homers, people NOTICE and get suspicious. Roger Clemens’ comeback didn’t raise quite as many eyebrows, because he was ALWAYS big and had ALWAYS thrown a lot of strikeouts. A big guy getting bigger doesn’t attract as much notice as a skinny guy getting big.
Hence, EVERYBODY was pretty sure Barry Bonds was juicing, while a lot more people gave Roger the benefit of the doubt.
Or, you know, 46. From 92 - 99, he never hit less than 33 (and that in strike-shortened '95), hit 40+ three times, and hit 37 in 112 games in '94. From 92-97 he finished 2nd, 1st, 3rd, 4th, 2nd, and 4th in the NL in homers. I forget the exact timeline for when he was supposed to have started juicing, but I’m pretty sure it was sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s. It’s a major overstatement to say he wasn’t a big-time home run hitter.
The only reason I made the McGwire comparison is because he kind of set the bar in terms of PED users getting HOF votes. What did McGwire get? Just over 20%? I suspect Clemens will be in the 30’s on his first ballot.
Now, Clemens is a top 5 all time pitcher, if not top 3. But the above statement is absurd. In other words, you’d take 1 Clemens on your staff over 2 Ryans? No way.
As you’re well aware, the HOF is as much (more, actually) about milestone numbers as it is about quality careers. Fred McGriff isn’t sniffing the HOF at 493 HRs, but I bet he’d be a first ballot entry if he’d have stuck around for 7 more dingers. Therefore, in the eyes of the HOF voters (not necessarily yours or mine), McGwires almost 600 (what is it, 580something?) HRs would make him a cinch of a first ballot entry under different circumstances.
That said, yes, Clemens’ career was even more illustrious. And I still think he’ll fall well short on the first ballot. HOF voters are all about making guys wait and sending a message. I couldn’t say if Clemens will ever get in, but I’d guess it will be at least a 5 year wait. Personally, I think players should be on the ballots no more than 5 times.
People may be underestimating how many home runs Bonds hit earlier in his career because he hit so many after using PEDs. I sort of love the irony of that because he apparently started juicing in the first place because he was tired of being overshadowed by guys who were hitting more home runs, and if one of the consequences of his cheating is that people wound up underestimating him, that sounds an awful lot like Bonds getting what he deserves in the court of baseball fandom.
To try to put this in perspective a little: he hit a lot of home runs, but he was also hitting way fewer than the guys who were viewed as the big home run hitters in the late '90s. Yes, in 1993 (at age 29) he tied for the major league lead with 46 homers. In 1999 (age 35) he hit 34 homers and his home run totals had declined for four straight seasons. At that point he had 444 career home runs. I’m not sure exactly where he ranked all-time at that point, but I think he was in the top 25. Here’s where he ranked in the years after '93 and before we know he started using Winstrol:
1994: 37 (5th, Matt Williams lead the majors with 43)
1995: 33 (outside the top 10, Albert Belle hit 50)
1996: 42 (tied for 9th, McGwire hit 52)
1997: 40 (five-way tie for 8th, McGwire hit 58)
1998: 37 (outside the top 10, McGwire hit 70)
1999: 34 (outside the top 10, McGwire hit 65)
So again, by 1999, his home run totals had declined for four straight years and he’d done no better than eighth in the majors (and that a five-way tie) in the last five seasons. You probably would not have counted him as one of the biggest home run hitters in baseball at that point. The next year he hit 49 and then 73, then had three more years with 45 or 46.
There’s another irony to this: Barry Bonds spent MOST of his early career griping about how the fans and autograph hounds and media were always besieging him and wouldn’t leave him alone (after one such rant, Dusty Baker pointed to Bary’s motorcycle, which had a huge “BARRY BONDS- MVP” sign on it, and said, “You can’t have it both ways, man”).
IF he were merely an introvert who wanted to be left alone, he should have been HAPPY that McDwire an Sosa were getting so much attention! He should have been THRILLED thta reporters and autograph seekers were flocking to Sosa and McGwire and giving him the peace and solitude he’d always claimed he wanted.
Intead, he started juicing so that he could hit homers and get all the attention and media coverage he’d always dishonestly said he didn’t want!
To use a contrast I’ve pointed out before… Eddie Murray was a genuine introvert. He just wanted to play ball and be left alone. He NEVER said anything to the press, and after a while, reporters just ignored him… which is exactly the way Murray wanted it.
Barry Bonds could have done the same thing. Instead, he actively sought out what he pretended was unwanted attention.
Eddie Murray really wanted to be left alone. Barry Bonds actually NEEDED to be surrounded by fans and reporters, because he LOVED cursing them and treating them like dirt.
Do you think he’ll dedicate the rest of his life to finding the *real *steroid user? Maybe write a book, “If I Juiced.”
Yup. And in the long view he would have been remembered as a player who was immensely superior to McGwire and Sosa. His persecution complex drove him to do some things that were really absurd. In a sense it’s tragic because he brought down his own reputation, but I admit it doesn’t feel tragic to me because he was always such an unmitigated asshole.
In the long run? Absolutely I’d happily take half of Clemens’s career just as fast as all of Ryan’s. Clemens was twice as valuable as Ryan.
I’ve been to the Hall of Fame, and had a great time there. It’s a fun and interesting museum of baseball history. The plaque room (or whatever they call it) is really the least of it. It’s sort of like looking through a stack of gold-plated baseball cards. Kind of cool, but it really makes no difference to me who’s hanging in there and who isn’t.
The selection process is just too arbitrary to have any real authority. First of all, Pete Rose isn’t there, which immediately decreases the validity of the honor. Second, a bunch of other guys aren’t there and may never be, simply because a relatively small group of high-and-mighty writers who probably don’t have enough talent to be bat boys have decided to blackist anybody who ever touched a steroid.
No, I don’t have a better idea. But I take HOF selections with a very tiny grain of salt.
The day Rose, Joe Jackson, McQwire, Clemens or Bonds gets inducted is the last day I’ll consider the HoF to have any validity as a measure of greatness.
Whoah. Ignorance fought there. I had always assumed that baseball was specifically exempted by Congress from the Sherman Act because it’s the national pastime, blah blah.
This is actually quite true; if you go to the Hall of Fame, the plaque room is almost easy to miss. It’s not terribly interesting; the exhibit rooms are the cool parts. And anyway, the plaques are often kind of weird looking and a surprising number of them don’t look like the player.
But when people say “Hall of Fame,” what is important isn’t the physical plaque, it’s the status of having been honored. As you yourself say, one of their weird things about it is that “Pete Rose isn’t there.” But, of course, he very much is; Rose is all over the Hall of Fame. But he hasn’t had the honor of being elected to it, and that’s what matters.
As to the eligibility of different people,
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There is a huge difference, in my humble opinion, between Joe Jackson/Pete Rose and other gamblers and steroid/alleged steroid guys like McGwire and Clemens, and
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It’s always been the case that some players who should be in aren’t and some who shouldn’t are. The HoF has never been a clear cut measure of greatness; they were making bizarre decisions before the Korean War started. They inducted Jack Chesbro in 1946, which is kind of like inducting Bob Welch (Bob got exactly one HOF vote when his name came up.) To be honest, I think that’s part of the fun. If the cutoff was really clear and there was never a mistake or a controversy there’d be nothing to talk about.
It’s ironic that the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) might be the group responsible for denying Bonds a place in the Hall of Fame.
Supposedly, Bonds bulked up in an effort to hit more homers because he felt that lesser players, like Sosa and McGwire, were being lauded as the game’s elite. He had a point, thanks to the BBWAA. In 1998 they awarded the mvp award to Sosa, with McGwire finishing second. Bonds finished 8th despite being the best all-around player in the NL. Voters were wowed by homerun and RBI totals, which also explains the absurdity of Juan Gonzalez winning the AL mvp that same year.
The Hall needs a big exhibit explaining the “steroid era” and the writers need to enshrine the players with deserving career numbers. That means Clemens and Bonds should be in first ballot.