Should Proven Steroid Users be Allowed in the Hall of Fame?
My answer is a clear and resounding no. Let me preface this by saying it is difficult to argue such a blanket statement and as with all things baseball being no different, it's hard to not look at things on a case by case basis. That being said I still firmly believe that proven steroid users have no place in the shrine of baseball legend. My arguments can be broken down into three different categories. They are as follows:
Argument 1- Character and integrity are key factors that Hall of Fame voters must use to determine if a player is worthy.
· It doesn't matter that everyone was doing it and it doesn't matter that there was tons of peer pressure blah blah blah, any baseball player who knowingly did steroids would have trouble admitting that what they were doing was ok. Every proven roider who knowingly took steroids knew they were cheating and getting an unfair leg up on the competition. They didn't want others to gain that advantage over them, so they joined in on the party. Not that I can't sympathize with that mentality, but it doesn't make it a moral or legal act and when being judged on character and integrity, these players unquestionably fail.
Argument 2- Cheating is cheating and the issue must be addressed.
· As good as many of the steroid users are and were (Arod, Bonds, Clemens etc) and yes you could field one hell of an all-star team with those users, they cheated and must be penalized. When Reggie Bush broke the NCAA rules, they stripped him of his Heisman Trophy. That's one way to handle things; maybe we should strip our steroid users of their accolades. Take Bonds' 7 MVPs away, wipe clean his career home run record and strip him of his single season home run record. But Baseball has elected not to go that route, leave the past in the past move forward. Since many of these players are done playing, we can't suspend them or make them leave baseball. So what do we do to punish cheaters? The only we can....tarnish the legacy.
Argument 3- What about the other guys?
· I look at baseball and the way it's handled incidents of this nature in the past. Roger Maris' 61 home runs had an asterisk for over 20 year simply because baseball changed and he played 8 more games than Ruth. Pete Rose is still not in the Hall of Fame because he gambled on baseball years after playing and racking up the most hits of all time. If these players can be vilified for their actions, should we not treat these roiders the same way? Granted we have evolved and nobody thinks what happened to Maris was justified, but if we are determining that rule breaking such as Rose merits you on the outside looking in, this should fall into the same category.
· What about guys like Chipper Jones, Omar Vizquel, Mike Mussina, John smoltz, Curt Schilling, and many others who are border line Hall of Famers (you may disagree with my list), if we allow steroid users in the HOF many of these guys will simply miss out. It's not fair that the outcome for playing the game with honor and dignity is to not be remembered among the greats. Had Larry "Chipper" Jones done steroids could he not have reach 500 home runs and won another MVP? Would his achievements not have surpassed a Manny Ramirez? I'm not arguing who's a better player; I just don't know how much the drugs help an athlete. I know it won't turn me into a Hall of Famer that's for sure, but I wonder to what lengths it makes an impact. For example the most home runs hit in a season was 60 and then 61 for 71 years combined. Then in a matter of 4 years we had that record broken 6 times, 6 times!! Bonds had 73, McGwire had 70 and 65, and Sosa had 66, 64, and 63. These were very good home run hitters no doubt, but would any of them have broken 60 without help? We will never know. So I wonder what accomplishments were aided by steroids and what wasn't and rather than attempt to sift through all of the statistics, I'd rather support the Smoltz's of the world for racking up great stats fairly. He might be a worse pitcher than Clemens and honestly I'd have a hard time arguing that he was better. However Smoltz deserves the HOF in my opinion because he didn't succumb to the pressure (I hope) and he accomplished so much with dignity.
In Conclusion I just want to address one final point, the "Everyone was doing it" argument. This to me serves as a justification for acting unethically and doesn't serve as any excuse. Steroid users and other baseball writers have said that it's hard not juicing because they're all competitors and to win and stay competitive you have to do anything you can to improve your chances. I've even heard players and former players say they would do steroids if they knew they wouldn't get caught because they were such fierce competitors and they wanted to be the best. My response to that: Real competitors want to win the right way. Juicers want the stats and the fame; the clean players want to honor the game. The real competitors want to work harder to succeed and deserve to be viewed in a class amongst themselves, not with phonies.
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