How should steroids affect a Hall of Fame vote. Ah, but that is the question, isn't it? No one seems to know. At least, most older, professional writers, the kind of people that get to be in the Baseball Writers Association of America -- which just allowed Internet writers and the gents from Baseball Prospectus in last year -- don't seem to know. The rest of us? We have a pretty good idea.
But let's get to that in a second. For now, we must wrestle with this news: The Chicago chapter of the BBWAA is going to meet and finally hammer out how this issue should affect their votes. After that, they will dance! Maybe not the dancing part:
It's that kind of uncertainty that prompted Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander to ask the Chicago chapter if it could discuss the issue during this weekend's Cubs-White Sox series at U.S. Cellular Field. "The guidelines used to be so simple: stats, longevity and star power. It's all been trumped by performance-enhancing drug use and drug use suspicion," Telander said Tuesday. "Part of me says it's not fair we have to make these determinations, but we do."
All due respect, Rick, but no, you don't. Past Hall of Fame voters didn't penalize players -- your childhood heroes -- for using greenies to make it to the mound on the 10th day of a road trip. Past Hall of Fame voters didn't consider Ty Cobb's vehement racism and all-around horrible person-ness enough to keep him out of the Hall. Just a few years ago, people didn't seem to mind that Goose Gossage openly admitted to cheating; he was elected. (Gossage's cheating is apparently cutesy enough to get the a-OK.)
There's a really simple solution to all of this: ignore it. Look at the numbers. If you're going to assume that everybody was cheating in baseball, then the competitive advantage is such that good players were good anyway, with maybe a little more offensive power than they might have had. (Remember, in the 90's ballparks got dramatically smaller, too.) If you think there were only a few rogue steroids users -- and the evidence suggests otherwise -- then you put yourself right back in the position of having to pass judgement on those you suspect of doing steroids. What does that get you? Mark McGwire's Hall of Fame vote says hello.
So a kind word to the BBWAA of Chicago: stop playing God. You don't know. We don't know. But stop trying to pretend the sanctity of the Hall of Fame -- already filled with cheats, liars, drunks and racists -- will be sullied by our modern foils. It won't.
Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.
