http://web.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/rules.jsp

“5. Voting: Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”

So does charging the mound once in your career tank your ‘sportsmanship’ rating?

I agree with you wholeheartedly on Murphy – if steroids can negatively affect a player’s eligibility, why can’t being a model citizen in all aspects of the voting rules put a guy over the hump?

As example I look at Dale Murphy. To anyone from the game of baseball that has ever spoken about Murphy he seems to be held in as high of regards as a player can be held. While I’ll admit that his numbers make him a “fringe” candidate, he was easily one of the top 3 hitters of the 1980s. But I don’t think voters are saying, “Man, I should vote for the guy because he’s got as much class as anyone who ever played the game”.

Just my take.

The real shame is that MLB, the commissioner, and most fans turned their heads the other way on PEDs because the entertainment value provided outweighed the perceived negatives.

Now those are the same people condemning the users for cheating.

I heard an interesting comparison last night on radio – MLB Hall of Fame voting criteria specifically contains a ‘character’ portion. NFL HoF does not.

Does Lawrence Taylor get into the NFL HoF if there is a character clause?

Now I understand if some people feel that what Pete Rose did was not as bad as players using steroids etc. That really doesn’t matter though. The rules are the rules and Pete Rose knowingly broke them. He should have to suffer the consequences of those actions. Just because he was a great player doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have to follow the rules and pay the piper if he chooses to break them.

For that matter, what does Rose’s gambling as a manager have to do with his playing career?

Just because Bart Giamatti had it in for him, the hall excludes one of the greatest players in history?

I’m not saying the government is wrong – but would this be an issue, would anyone care – if steroids weren’t illegal? It’d be just like you said, it’d be a “technology” improvement, like batting gloves and those massive elbow guards, etc.

It’s an interesting point for discussion, at least.

And it’s not like it’s only hitters that are taking (or took) PEDs, pitchers took/take them too. So shouldn’t there be somewhat of a net zero effect even with the fact that PEDs were rampant in the previous decade?

1 – totally agree with you on this. My biggest concern with the whole ordeal is that it has tainted the history of my favorite sport. And it’s a long history, now subject to a number of asterisks.

2 – I’m with you, I’m not necessarily advocating rewriting the books as much as I was passing along Wilbon’s idea. However, it’s equally disheartening when you relate it to your first comments.

3 – There is no doubt that a number of changes in the game have resulted in a revisionist history of sorts for MLB. But the fact remains that the home run records (and who knows how many others), for now, have been directly affected by this – by count of admission and/or indictment. I don’t know that we’d ever be able to prove anything regarding amphetamines. But alas, these are great opinions – exactly what I was looking for.

One final thought, occurring to me as I was reading your last items – if the government didn’t get involved, and wasn’t so against drug use and PEDs weren’t illegal – would we care? Baseball is entertainment, right? Folks surely loved McGwire and Sosa in 1998. Would anyone care if this hadn’t been made into an international incident? After all, at that point the players would only be hurting themselves.

Not to mention, as undorgre mentions – you can’t reliably test for HGH.

A few other thoughts around this…

[1] IMO the worst part of this whole “scandal” is that the shadow cast upon baseball by steroids/PEDs has lessened the value of the two most important and revered records in all of professional sports… the single season HR record and the career HR record. Neither of these records will ever have the same magical qualities that they once possessed.

[2] I am completely against the notion of altering the record books based on who has been linked to PEDs and who hasn’t. The fact remains that PEDs have been used by baseball players since the 1940s, when amphetamines (“greenies”) were introduced. Many accounts have been written about how the masses of players took greenies throughout the decades. That said, I could argue that, if one assumes that players are playing clean today, that those that played in the decades in which greenies were not a banned substance had a distinct advantages over today’s players. It would become a logistical nightmare to try and edit the record books. From my perspective the one thing that steroids does more than anything else for players is it helps them cope with and avoid with the fatigue of a long season, which is exactly what greenies did for players. Sure, steroids give some extra bulk and speed but I think the ability to fight off fatigue is the most significant aspect of steroids (and especially HGH).

As an example, can you really compare a yesteryear player of the likes of a Maris or Mantle, who could legally take greenies as much as they wanted, to the likes of an Evan Longoria, who is not allowed to use greenies and other banned PEDs? I’m not saying that Maris/Mantle did take amphetamines but they legally could have and it’s known that a large percentage of players did over the decades. So in that respect it’s fair to say that it’s a disadvantage to compare the today’s players (and those in the fut to those who played from the 1950s to the 1980s… very similar to how people say it’s unfair to compare those players from the 50s through the 80s to those in the 1990s and early 2000s.

[3] I think the comparison of gambling versus PEDs needs to be weighed separately. Gambling on sports has always been illegal (see Black Sox scandal) and as soon as a player or coach bets on their sport and the perception of a “fix” is on then all credibility and integrity are lost.

With PEDs, over the years some have been banned and as far as we know there are still some out there that are not. Greenies use to be legal, steroids were once not banned, and testing for some drugs such as HGH doesn’t even exist today. The use of various PEDs in some respect needs to be looked at in the same light as the differences that exist between yesteryear and today in sports equipment (e.g. baseball, bats, shin guards, etc.), rules (e.g. lower mound, shorter ballparks, etc.), and other areas (e.g. back in the day players worked 2nd jobs in the off-season, etc.). While I know some substances have been banned there is, IMO, more of a grey area when discussing PEDs but all things are black and white when gambling is involved. HoF voters will use their own subjectivity to determine the fates of players from this recent PED era.

I guess that’s enough rambling for now… for me personally, I really don’t care what’s happened in the past years as long as they figure out how to enforce the rules that they have today.