Steroids Should Still Mean Hall of Fame

What do these names McGwire, Bonds, Clemens, and now A-rod have in common. Besides having their rear ends injected with syringes, they are some of the greatest players to ever play the game. McGwire is one of the greatest home run hitters of all time. Bonds is the greatest home run hitter of all time and A-rod has the chance to become the greatest home run hitter of all time. Oh and Roger Clemens may just be the best pitcher of all time. In my opinion, shouldn’t that entitle each of them a trip into to the Hall of Fame? It should not be based off judgments of character or take moral stands like they did against Pete Rose. {I still find it hard to believe that the all time hits leader is not in.} The Hall of Fame should include the very best players that define a generation. Unfortunately for baseball, all players that make it to Cooperstown within the last 20 years will be under a cloud of speculation no matter if they did use performance enhancers or not.

My major concern with Hall of Fame voting is that voters are too focused on athletes who have been linked to banned substances when in reality Major League Baseball was the problem. Bud Selig said in a recent statement that A-rod “shamed the game.” I’m sorry commissioner who makes 18 million a year, but you in fact “shamed the game.” It took until the year 2005 to finally make steroids a punishable offense, and HGH is still being used because your league has not found a way to test for it yet. So technically every athlete who used a banned substance, while it might have been unethical, did nothing legally wrong that could be punished by the league. Baseball ignored steroids as an issue during the 90’s when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were competing for the single season home run record. Why you might ask? That’s a good question. The reason is because baseball used their record setting race to generate revenue from the fans. Baseball became a relevant sport again from an economic aspect since it just went through the turmoil of a strike in 1994. You would think baseball had to have known that their players were on some sort of “juice” for a long time but decided to handle that issue for a later day. Well, that day has come and it is not leaving us anytime soon.

Many players who have actually admitted to using steroids in their confessions often say “It was part of the culture.” That is true, yet it took baseball quite a while to understand that. What seems to be lost in this whole A-rod scandal is that he was just 1 of a 104 players who tested positive for a banned substance. The greater problem is an entire league has been plagued by this issue and not just a select few. It is easier to focus on the great ones because they make more money, become instant role models, and we feel like we deserve better from them. Though there still remains 103 other players on a list somewhere who have also “shamed the game”, but nothing imminent appears as far as tracking them down. That might be because once again at the time of these testing’s, steroids were not a punishable offense by Major League Baseball.

Rather than trying to go back and time, I and many other fans just want to know that the current game we are watching is in fact clean. It is Major League Baseball’s responsibility {that would mean you Bud} to have regular testing for all, not just some or the ones that are testable, but I mean all banned substances. Most fans are tired of congressional hearings that seem similar to the Salem Witch Trials. Besides doesn’t congress have bigger issues to solve like the economy?