In fact, there are many “enshrined” members whose behavior was rather reprehensible. Ty Cobb was a notoriously horrible human being, and Gaylord Perry was an admitted user of the illegal spitball. Each of them has a plaque hanging in Cooperstown dedicated to his career. They are recognized not because of their philanthropy or clean play, but because they demonstrated excellence on the field. Their performances as athletes encouraged members of the press to vote them into the Hall, despite their flaws.
Cooperstown was never about voting in good people, and it has rarely shut out people who acted immorally or cheated, with the exceptions of the Black Sox and Pete Rose. Some would even say that cheating is a part of baseball, with corked bats, spitballs and stealing signals from the other team seen all the time.
This month, with the shocking admission by Alex Rodriguez that he injected himself with performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) for three years, baseball finds itself in the unenviable position of having to deal with most of the great power hitters of the past 10 years being linked to steroids.
After A-Rod’s admission and subsequent lying and fumbling in a disastrous press conference at spring training, reporters, Hall of Famers and fans alike have asserted that no player who used PEDs should or will make it into the Hall of Fame. All of a sudden, people want to treat Cooperstown as some sacred society, and it makes no sense. I’m not condoning steroids and I think steroid users deserve to be labeled as cheaters. I even think first offenders should be suspended for at least a year, but I say let the great players of this era who are connected to steroids into the Hall.
My reasoning is based on the idea that a hall of fame can acknowledge both the accomplishments and sins of its inductees. We have no idea if players in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s were clean. Amphetamines were certainly in use then, but there were no tests for them. Mike Schmidt, the legendary Hall of Fame Phillies third baseman, admitted, “If I had played during [the modern] era I would have taken steroids.” Because Schmidt would’ve cheated if he had the opportunity, should we remove his plaque from Cooperstown?
We can’t be moral arbiters for the Baseball Hall of Fame because nothing is certain and because induction does not depend on morality. Furthermore, we don’t know how much steroids help a player’s numbers and can’t numerically judge this. Those who believe inducting Barry Bonds and Rodriguez would condone their behavior and set a bad example for kids are unfairly equating being a Hall of Famer with being a role model. It can be asserted with confidence that many Hall of Famers who played before and during the integration of baseball were racists, including the immortalized Babe Ruth. Did voters condone their racism by honoring their athletic achievements in Cooperstown?
Let’s not make Cooperstown out to be more than it is — a museum. It is meant to teach about the game of baseball and chronicle the game’s storied history. With each decade, there are a certain number of players, determined by the media, who defined baseball for that time period and excelled at their position. These players should be voted in, even if their last names are Bonds, Clemens and Rodriguez. We can take the steroid era for what it is and assume that numbers were inflated. This can be explained plain and clear in Cooperstown just like it is explained that during the dead ball era, pitchers’ numbers were inflated, or that when the mound was lowered in 1969, batters were given an advantage.
If Bonds gets into the Hall, which seems unlikely at this point, there should be an additional plaque detailing his use of steroids and their alleged effect on his play. Bonds’s and Roger Clemens’s plaques would stand in stark contrast to those of his clean contemporaries, who include Derek Jeter, Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez and Ken Griffey Jr.
Induct the clean players, by all means, but there are some steroid-linked players who need to be included. A Hall of Fame without Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa would ignore the driving force behind the revitalization of baseball in the ’90s and the reason the 2008 season set baseball attendance records. The home run chase of 1998, although phony in retrospect, put baseball in the spotlight and brought back memories of Roger Maris and Ruth. When Sosa hit over 60 home runs in three different seasons, he cemented his place as a great hitter, regardless of PED use.
We now hear that anywhere from 30 to 90 percent of the players of that time period were using steroids. PEDs were illegal, and just because everyone was doing them doesn’t make cheating right, but how can we leave out entirely the best players of this era when they weren’t the only ones cheating? Their numbers are inflated, I agree, and we can acknowledge this in Cooperstown, just like we can acknowledge that Hall of Famer Whitey Ford doctored his pitches. There’s room for both Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron in Cooperstown. That doesn’t mean we have to respect them the same amount. And that’s okay; the National Baseball Hall of Fame isn’t about respect, it’s about history.