Despite their historic accomplishments, the voters of the Baseball Writers of America have not elected these players because of their alleged, admitted, or presumed use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). The moralistic rationale for their rejection is straightforward enough: the players who took steroids, HGH, or other PEDs were cheaters, and their behavior made a mockery of the records they broke and the great statistics they compiled. They betrayed the game of baseball, and so do not deserve to be enshrined in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.
This argument of course ignores the use of other PEDs not that long ago (lots of records were set during an era when amphetamines were handed out in MLB clubhouses like M&M?s). More importantly, this moralizing ignores the context in which these players chose to juice.
As my Cubs season ticket?partner Brian Azzarello pointed out to me, if the voters? logic holds, then some other consequences should follow:
? * No baseball writer who covered baseball during the Steroids Era should be awarded the Taylor Spink Award.
? * No baseball broadcaster who worked on radio or TV during the Steroids Era should be awarded the Ford C. Frick Award.
...In short: writers and broadcasters helped to create the disease they now claim to cure by denying these players their rightful place in the Hall of Fame. But if the best players of the Steroids Era do not belong in Cooperstown because they betrayed the game, then neither do the scribes and mike men who covered that impure game.
And as long as we?re on our high horses here, no manager or general manager of an MLB team during the Steroids Era should be eligible for Hall of Fame induction either.
Yeah, I?m looking at you, Tony La Russa.
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