Sunday, January 7, 2007

McScrewed

On Tuesday Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn were elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame with some of the highest percentages of votes of all time. Two excellent ballplayers that by anyone’s definition were Hall-worthy. But the elephant, or rather muscle bound redhead, in the room was completely screwed.

In the late 1990’s, there was no more exciting player to watch than Mark McGwire. His home runs were moonshots, and at any at bat, he was liable to launch one again. In 1998, his (along with that Sosa guy’s) chase of Roger Maris’ home run record captivated the world. After finishing with a record 70 home runs, McGwire reached a status that few athletes, or people for that matter, have ever reached. There was no player more marketable, and Major League Baseball was thrilled to use a hero like McGwire to help people forget about the long strike that crippled the game a few years before. In fact, he was awarded with the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award, for his numerous charitable work, which is awarded to the player “who best exemplify character and integrity on and off the field.” Now McGwire is seen as a real like Lex Luther. Funny how the times change.

Flash forward nine years later, after McGwire’s career was over, a career that saw him win Rookie of the Year, be elected to twelve All Star Games, have a ratio of 10.6 at bats per home run, the greatest in the history of baseball, and finish with 583 home runs, the seventh best all-time. So how could such a phenomenal baseball player finish with 23.1% of voters picking him for the Hall of Fame when 75% is needed? There are a number of answers to this: a book by a former teammate which labeled him as a steroid user, an embarrassing appearance before Congress where he famously ‘refused to talk about the past,’ and perhaps most of all, the shift of public opinion that made steroids the 8th deadly sin.

It’s probable that Mark McGwire did use steroids, and steroids are really not good for the game of baseball or anyone. But the problem is that baseball let it become a part of its sport. Owners and the head honchos of Major League Baseball loved the home run chase and the increase in popularity in the sport that followed it. Baseball writers, the people that vote for the Hall of Fame, did nothing to dig deeper into a possible steroid problem that now evidently played a big role in their decision not to vote McGwire into the Hall, and really, the writers have no one else to look at for allowing this to happen. So now, and once only pressure was applied to baseball, are they taking a stance against steroids.

Now everyone wants to play revisionist history and discredit what happened in the ‘90’s as the “steroid era.” But the problem with this is you really can’t just ignore an entire decade of baseball. People would love to pretend that everyone was clean and only a select few were doing steroids, but the test results have shown otherwise. There have been more pitchers than hitters caught with steroids, and one of the first hitters caught was Alex Sanchez, all 5’10”, 179 lbs of him, with a whopping six home runs over his five year career. The point is that you really can’t say who was using steroids, or that the hitters using steroids weren’t facing pitching also on the juice.

The way that Cal Ripken and Tony Gywnn could waltz into the Hall of Fame while Mark McGwire is picked on because he hit big home runs and wasn’t better prepared to face Congress is also questionable. To say Ripken or Gwynn never used steroids is something that you really can’t be certain of. People just liked them more; they had good personalities and were never confronted about the issue under oath. Take Ripken for example. He was so determined to help his team that he played in a record 2,632 games with broken bones and many other ailments. Eventually he took pride in his streak and refused to sit. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have taken steroids to help recover from an injury and keep his streak alive? No one can 100% say he didn’t. When you start picking and choosing like this, there is a problem.

McGwire was just the first player that will face the scrutiny of the voters after spending much of his career in the ‘90’s. When other Hall-worthy players like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro come up for election, they will problem face the same trouble getting in. What about players like Roger Clemens and Albert Pujols who there have been whispers about possible steroid use, but no one wants to believe it? Baseball writers, who are turning more and more into moral preachers everyday, have made up their mind: they’ll vote for the ones that were nice to them and popular with the fans while ignoring the facts that a great deal of them were probably using steroids.

McGwire, one of baseball’s truly legendary sluggers, may not ever make it to the Hall of Fame without ever been convicted of anything or admitting to any wrongdoing. He’s being treated like a witch in Salem because he may have done something, but also may not have. The Hall of Fame will someday soon not have many of the best players in baseball history inducted into its hallowed grounds. And does that make the Hall of Fame any more legitimate than if they let in player who may have used steroids?

Baseball needs to accept its past and let McGwire in. Plus it would do wonders for my 1985 Topps Mark McGwire rookie card.

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