Let PED users into the HoF, but with an asterisk?

[Evil Yoda]

So says Tony LaRussa, who was himself inducted. Who agrees? Not I.

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I would guess this is coming from something like, "Congratulations, Tony, you're going into Cooperstown. I'll never get in because now everyone knows I used performance enhancing drugs. But you knew it the whole time you were building your career on my back, mine and men like me, some of whom remain undiscovered."

It is my opinion that cheaters do not deserve baseball's highest honor, and PED users are cheaters.

[Deleted]

If they're going to let in PED users, then players like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose should also be inducted.

An argument can be made that the offenders played in a time when "everyone was doing it," but trying to define "everyone" so long after the fact is problematic. Some figures place the number of steroid users at no more than 10 to 20 percent, while others place them as high as 50 or more. The real challenge is in enforcing such de facto banishments is determining exactly who and who wasn't juicing at that time. Maybe a guy--such as Barry Bonds--began to resemble a noseguard more than an outfielder late in his career. A player's longevity, statistical anomalies, back acne, etc. is damning on the surface, but it's also circumstantial.

For every steroid-era player such as Ricky Henderson and Frank Thomas, both of whom made the Hall on the first ballot without question from the BBWAA, there are others such as Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza, who appear consigned to banishment simply because they have been deemed PED likely. I would hope that those with the power to determine who gets in and who doesn't are doing the best with the information they have, but the process is still arbitrary and uncertain. And the issue is only likely to intensify as more steroid-era players become eligible for the Hall. In some cases, it's going to be guilt by association; some players are going to be doomed to suffer the same fate as Buck Weaver did so many years ago.

I think the real shame here is that, in at least some cases, the cheating wasn't necessary. Guys like Bonds and Clemens were well on their way to taking their place among baseball immortals on merit alone. Whether pride, ego, or some insatiable competitive drive, they sacrificed immortality for short-term greatness.

[stevez51]

Jul 27, 2014 15:06:20 GMT -5 Evil Yoda said:

So says Tony LaRussa, who was himself inducted. Who agrees? Not I.

Article

I would guess this is coming from something like, "Congratulations, Tony, you're going into Cooperstown. I'll never get in because now everyone knows I used performance enhancing drugs. But you knew it the whole time you were building your career on my back, mine and men like me, some of whom remain undiscovered."

It is my opinion that cheaters do not deserve baseball's highest honor, and PED users are cheaters.

They are keeping out the cheaters but voting in the managers who possibly knew of their players using and got wins because of it. Did anyone question that ..?

[Evil Yoda]

Jul 27, 2014 18:10:42 GMT -5 stevez51 said:

They are keeping out the cheaters but voting in the managers who possibly knew of their players using and got wins because of it. Did anyone question that ..?

I am never going to cast a ballot, but I would not support a manager who had a lot of steroid users or suspected steroid users. It is my belief that managers know most of what goes on in the locker room, and a guy willing to accept cheating is himself a cheater.

[Deleted]

But what about when players cheated by corking bats and doctoring baseballs? I'm sure those managers were aware of their players' underhandedness, yet a number of them are in the Hall of Fame. Hell, nobody tested the elasticity of the rules more than John J. McGraw, who is widely considered to be the dean of baseball managers.

There's an old baseball maxim which says it's only cheating if the other team is doing it.