Here are your 2013 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, those who had careers that catapulted them to Cooperstown:
(Insert sound of wind, crickets or picture tumbleweed drifting through the Old West).
That’s right, no one was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, the first time since 1996 that’s happened. The lack of inductees – technically, there were three, but they all died in the 1930s and were elected by the veteran’s committee – means that it’s the first time since 1960 that the induction ceremony will include no new or living honorees.
If this isn’t a condemnation of performance enhancing drugs and the era of 1990s and early 2000s, I don’t know what is. The names are there: Mark McGwire,
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa.
They are all floating out there, names as big as their arms and thighs and heads in the baseball world.
The stats are there, too. Home runs, strikeouts, hits – record shattering accomplishments litter their resumes.
But something else is there, too.
The asterisk, the black mark, the whispers. The performance enhancing drugs.
I had a friend tell me recently that he didn’t care about the steroids. He wanted the juice dripping off the ball. If someone wanted to ‘roid out for his entertainment and smash the ball 500 feet to provide good theater, even if it wrecked the man’s body or health, then so be it.
And really, I’m not sure I care about that, either. Granted, health is an issue – but it’s their bodies, it’s their decision, it’s their long-term health. Who am I to tell them what they can and cannot do?
I’m much more concerned about how we view this as fans and mothers and fathers. We spend all of our time telling our children to work hard, then we allow others to cut-corners in life on the path to success and riches? If that’s a jealous comment, then fine, though it’s not intended to be.
Someone once asked me if I could have taken a few pills or injections back in high school that would have turned me into a D-1 college basketball player and future NBA star, would I take it. My answer was and remains: no. I want to always know what I did or didn’t get was solely based on my own merits. We’re already fighting advantages in sports and in life. Some people are smarter in general, others more methodical. Some are fast, some are slow. Short, tall, strong, lean. These can all be used as advantages and disadvantages.
The best are the ones that maximize what they have, they rise to the top. If you have a Hall of Fame, it does imply these are the best, the ones to strive for and mimic and be like. They are the standard.
Who wants that standard mixed with performance enchancers? Many would argue that why wouldn’t you want to improve your performance, in whatever realm you do it? I’ve got no problem with supplements and vitamins and flu shots – things that prevent and fill in gaps I can’t get from food. Optimal nutrition. New ideas in the realm of sleep, rehab, surgery and nutrition are all good.
But if you’re in a controlled group where 50-60 percent of the people are doing one thing and 40-50 percent are doing another, that taints your sample and your results. How can you compare the two? How do you know, specifically, who was doing what?
Steroids don’t allow you to hit the ball, that still takes practice. But it does allow you quicker bat speed – not in a natural way. HGH doesn’t make you better, it just helps you recover from injury faster than the other guy.
But we’re not even really debating all that today, are we?
The question is, what to do with those that we know or suspect did use these drugs and enhancers? Do we place them among the other baseball legends who accomplished their now broken records without those items? What does it say about us – and more importantly – to our young athletes if we do?
The criticism of the writers for failure to elect anyone is so misguided. Attacking the system and who votes and elects members is diverting attention away from the real conversation.
Which, essentially, is simple. You can keep the money you made entertaining us, the fame given by us and all the trophies you were awarded, but you will not be permitted to be forever remembered and represented as a standard-bearer of what we want our athletes to achieve.
Forget separate wings of the Hall, the conversation about the character clause. I don’t care if half the players in the Hall of Fame were jerks, they didn’t disrespect the game itself. You did. If Pete Rose doesn’t get in for gambling on baseball, you don’t get in for cheating your peers in baseball.
Barry Bonds wants us to turn the page, to stop being angry. OK, we have. Now what? Well, we just sent you the message: Go away.
It’s that simple, we’ll move on when you move on. You’re not getting in.
We won’t forget you, but you won’t be remembered with a bust, either.
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