I do not condone the use of steroids at all, but you don’t keep people out of the Hall of Fame because you created the paradigm for them to use the stuff by ignoring that they were using the stuff.
Major League Baseball had a serious problem and it turned its head because people were walking through the turnstiles again after experiencing the equivalent of a nuclear meltdown - a player strike that canceled the World Series.
MLB - the league and the player’s union - knew what was going on and did nothing about it until a half-hearted steroid policy slinked its way into the game in 2002.
Then, in 2005, MLB instituted an HGH policy, outlawing the drug. 2005. Are you kidding me? A drug that can’t be tested for anyways. It took you until 2005 to catch-on to what was going down in your league?
This is more than insidious; this is negligence of the worst kind. This was not ignorance or the naivety your mother had about your sleepovers at your buddy’s house as a junior in high-school. To willfully turn your head away knowing full well what you would see if you didn’t is quite another thing. Now, players are going to pay for your actions. MLB didn’t outlaw this stuff until after the fact. Should we arrest people that smoked in bars last year because a law has since been passed that you can’t smoke in bars?
It’s not moral, ethical or legal (without a prescription) to use steroids and let me reiterate that stance again. But, to be fair, it’s not moral, ethical or legal to engage in insider-trading but it happens every single day and - like baseball players - people are getting rich off their immoral, unethical and illegal activity.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, indeed, but two-dings don’t make a dong either. “Ding” the Commissioner’s office and MLB, “Ding” the player’s association, but don’t “Dong” a player in regard to the Hall of Fame because a player was playing by the rules that weren’t written at the time.
“But Wolf,” you say in a very pious tone, “there is no Hall of Fame for insider trading. The Hall of Fame stands for purity and accomplishments within the context of the rules. These men were cheaters!”
Cheaters to whom, my friends? Cheaters to you? Cheaters because you would never engage in such activity at your work-place? Now let the hypocrites gather together and, without hesitation or real consideration, condemn the players that engaged in such immoral and unethical activities.
If you saw your co-worker excelling in the office because he was engaging in something you couldn’t prove he was engaging in but he was unfairly benefiting from it just the same, would you partake just to keep up?
“Of course I wouldn’t, Wolf,” you scream, spittle flying from your mouth! “How dare you, sir! How dare you imply I would do such a thing?”
There are some of you I believe would not indulge and your righteous fire I will accept. But for many good and hard working people that love their families and would do anything for them to give them a better life than they might have had growing up, watch where you point that flame-thrower or prepare to suffer the consequences of your righteousness.
Would you engage in a victimless activity to support your wife and kids in an attempt to keep up with your co-worker? Be careful now…think about your answer. We’re talking about hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars and, in some cases, millions-of-dollars here.
And that’s what I hate about this the most: money. Money makes people do things they normally would not, including myself, and that sucks butter-milk. Money doesn’t solve problems in your life, make you a better father, a better husband or a better person. I’ve never seen a person’s character improve because of money and the only thing more powerful than money is the promise of money.
If you believe Barry Bonds and, now, Roger Clemens should not be in the Hall-of-Fame because of their alleged steroid use, than you better be prepared to expunge records and begin a witch-hunt the likes which have never been seen in professional sports. If you keep these guys out of The Hall I want to know who else took performance enhancing drugs! No, I don’t merely wish to know, I demand! And that’s the problem.
Should a player be rewarded because he concealed his use of steroids better than the other guy? No.
The Mitchell Report says there was a widespread “culture of drug use in baseball from the top to bottom.” MLB needs to acknowledge this, fix the problem as best they can, and let players like Clemens and Bonds into the hall or make the Hall-of-Fame irrelevant.
Taking steroids is wrong and it shouldn’t be done. But to say a player should not be in the MLB Hall-of-Fame because of it when it was epidemic in the sport is ludicrous. Juiced pitchers competing against juiced hitters in a juiced league with juiced bank accounts isn’t juicy, it’s just the way it was in the Steroid Era of Major League Baseball.
Comments? Email Us!
Recent Comments