Selig, Bonds & Clemens

Like so many other public institutions, the Baseball Hall of Fame has become something of a battleground. Who belongs, who doesn't. Who has been unfairly ostracized, who has been unfairly admitted. The allegations (and the debate) goes on and on and on.

The current disagreement is over the players who benefited from steroid usage. While technically not a rules violation (baseball was notoriously slow to act on their usage), it obviously provided an under the counter advantage for those who imbibed.

Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco are only the most-prominent names who admitted to using. Dozens (probably hundreds) of others also used them. But even in an era of bloated hitting statistics, steroids didn't turn everyone into Mickey Mantle.

Which is fundamental to the pro-steroids argument. Bonds and Clemens would've made the Hall of Fame, anyway. Why should they be punished for enhancing their skill set?

And I agree. To the first part, anyway. Both enjoyed notable and highly-successful beginnings to their careers. But as we were to see, that wasn't enough. It didn't matter that Bonds was a Gold Glove All-Star and a perpetual MVP candidate. Or that Clemens was a consistent Cy Young contender. They had to be Babe Ruth, too.

Bonds also underwent pronounced physical changes, including an enlarged head. Never one of the games nice guys, he became highly irascible, lashing out at fans and the media at the slightest provocation. I'll never forget his pronouncement that “we” didn't like him because he was Black. 

Really, Barry? Is that the reason? Are you saying that if you were white I'd be your fan club president? 

Hmmm.

Whatever regard I carried for him evaporated at that point. I relished his unofficial nickname: Asterisk. In addition to his chemically-enhanced output, he became the game's biggest asshole. Is that what's known as a win-win?

To the remaining members of the steroid club, Bonds was a blessing. As the player who enjoyed the greatest, most eye-popping benefit, he took a lot of heat off of those performing in smaller markets or with under-achieving teams.

The most convincing pro-steroids argument came from a baseball writer at the Chicago Tribune, who defended her picks thusly: The Commissioner who turned the blindest eye possible to the steroids scandal was voted into the Hall of Fame. Why? Because he made his employers a whole lot of money.

Should we really punish the players?

It is an argument I cannot fault. 

After the 1994 strike, baseball found itself on shaky ground. Or at least ground as shaky as a multi-billion dollar business ever finds itself on. It was scared. It's probably an overstatement to say the 1998 home run chase between McGwire and Sosa saved baseball, but again, it poured an awful lot of black ink into baseball at a very crucial time.

Being businessmen first, last and always, it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to envision team owners urging Bud Selig to go as easy on steroid use as the public would allow. And for that reason and that reason only, I'm grateful for Barry Bonds. His outsized success was impossible to ignore. Ditto questions about the game's integrity.

Judging by the vote counted Monday by the Contemporary Baseball Era Player's Committee, plenty of questions remain. And none of them appear to be answered with the words 'Hall of Fame'. Neither Bonds, Clemens, Palmeiro or Curt Schilling received the number of votes required for entrance.

I'm sure another generation, by and large ignorant of the steroid era, will look at their numbers and wonder why a previous generation had a problem with them. But for now, justice has triumphed. And in 2022, that's something.