Banging on the gates of the Hall of the Sordid...

And so it begins… after two years of waiting, baseball’s steroid era finally reaches the Hall of Fame and the men who sit in wait of their moment to cast judgment. Mark McGwire retired first, which means he’s the ice breaker. He’s the man who gets to stand up in front of the jury and take the first lobs of condemnation, of hurt, even of disgust. There will be more to follow, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro will come, and leave, together, Roger Clemens will be a sure-fire first ballot choice, but his election will be met with raised eyebrows by some, and of course there’s that cheerful guy out West who did things with a bat that not even the great Babe Ruth had done. What’s at stake? Depends whom you ask. It could be glory in the whimsical tails of baseball lore all encapsulated with a golden image of yourself in baseball’s eternal shrine, or it could just be a bronze plaque in a small city called Cooperstown. It matters only because it is the ultimate judgment of the men who are deemed to have allowed drugs to ruin the integrity of the American past time. Of course the people who are truly at fault for that, the power men in suits who broker the deals, create the laws, and blindly ignored what happened, well, maybe the steroid issue will come up if Bud Selig is ever seriously considered for the Hall. Instead, McGwire stands now in judgment. And judgment is what the voters intend to lay down.

Yet, the moral indignation emanating from the gatekeepers of baseball’s cherished hall is thick and pungent with the air of hypocrisy. After all, these are the men who spend every day in baseball locker rooms. These are the men who have spent the last fifteen years talking with clean and dirty players alike and yet it is these same men who remained quiet, or fooled, until Ken Caminiti spoke openly of the issue with Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci. Now they intend to expunge their guilt by withholding McGwire’s place from the Hall of Fame. Whatever one might think of the writer’s, are they right? Does McGwire deserve to sit for immortality amongst Babe Ruth, Lou Gherig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and Roberto Clemente?

Whatever else people want to make this Hall of Fame vote about, there are only two relevant questions here: 1) Did Mark McGwire use steroids? 2) Should that prevent him from residing in the Hall of Fame? I think that the answer to the first is, d’uh. A couple of things annoy me here: first, McGwire’s pathetic and weak display in front of congress; and second, people who say, “well there was never any proof he used steroids.” There wouldn’t have been any proof that he used drugs, because he played in an era where, executives, managers, writers, and fans ignored the possibility and failed to demand that players were tested. Yes, we live in a civilization in which people are innocent until proven guilty… in a court of law. Nobody’s prosecuting McGuire in a lawful court. Instead they’re trying to understand how he fits in with baseball’s history (and lets be clear that history is an extremely sordid one, including horrible racists, glorified alcoholics, noted philanders, all sorts of elaborate cheating, and even a gambler or two). McGwire is being tried in the court of public opinion and that court heeds not the shackles of facts, but deals instead in something inherently shadier, although occasionally more accurate. For instance, gut reaction: is O.J. Simpson a murderer, did Bill Clinton have sex with that woman, and should Britney Spears be held accountable for me ever hearing the name Kevin Federline? Of course the answer to all three is yes. We don’t need the evidence first. Common sense stands up, the evidence can follow after. We don’t need proof that McGwire used steroids, he needs proof he didn’t. Proof he does not have.

How does McGwire’s steroid use affect whether or not he should be in the Hall of Fame? I’ve spent more than a year fairly sure that when the time came I would argue that McGwire shouldn’t be enshrined. That by cheating he somehow denigrated the game, betrayed those that came before him, and padded his numbers. The third point is tricky. While it’s indisputable that McGwire got a lift from the drugs, given the guilty tests of journeymen like Alex Sanchez (a weak hitting outfielder), Juan Rincon, Rafael Betancourt, and Ryan Franklin (all below average pitchers), it’s hard to put McGwire’s use into context. And while I can confidently say that McGwire used steroids, can I confidently say that Cal Ripken didn’t. I mean, I feel fairly certain, but can you say definitively? Does Brady Anderson’s 50 home runs in 1996 mean he was using steroids, or does it just represent a Roger Maris-like career year? What about Rich Aurilia’s 37 home runs in 2001, on the same team, in the same year that Barry Bonds was hitting 73. That’s twice as many homers as any other year in Aurilia’s career. The result of hitting in the same lineup as Bonds (the “better pitch” corollary)? Or the result of being on the same team as Bonds (the “what happens in the clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse” corollary)? What about Bret Boone, who jumped from a .747 OPS in 2000, to a .950 OPS in 2001, at the age of 32. Can we read anything into Boone hitting 37, 24, 35, 24 home runs from ’01 to ’04, and then only 7 in ’05 when baseball finally had testing, or was he just a 36 year old middle infielder? And this doesn’t even acknowledge the slippery slope of investigating pitchers. We just don’t know anything from the ubiquitous steroid era. Nothing.

What we do know is that in 1994 greedy owners locked out greedy players and a season in which Tony Gwynn was threatening to hit .400, Greg Maddux was threatening to keep his ERA under 1.50, and the Expos were threatening to win the National League East ended abruptly without a World Series. The result? Fans abandoned the national past time, in droves. Like the rich leaving the Titanic, baseball was going down. A year later Cal Ripken brought some goodwill to the game by showing that some players just want to show up and play ball every day, but the sport was still falling by the wayside in the sporting public’s mind. American athletes were playing football, basketball, and even (gasp) soccer over baseball, and the fans weren’t going to the stadiums or watching on TV. What changed? What brought the prosperity which now means that teams have enough money to shell out 136 million for Alfonso Soriano? Nothing, really. Except of course a glorious summer in 1998 during which two gregarious “giants” took aim at Roger Maris and the magic number 61. We held our collective breaths for an entire summer as Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire swatted home run after home run, after home run. We laughed with Sammy as he sprinted out to right field every inning, mimicked him as he kissed his heart and god after every home run, and we cherished McGwire, as he brought his son along for every home run. Big Mac reminded us all that what really matters are the children; that to the benefit of the children, broken families can put aside their differences, just as he did when he brought his son, his ex-wife, and her new husband onto the national stage to celebrate that 62nd home run. It isn’t over the top to say that the home run chase in 1998 saved baseball, and for that we owe McGwire (and Sosa for that matter). Does he owe us? Absolutely. He owes us the truth, he owes us a return to public life in which he remembers that the children matter over everything else, even his lasting image.

Mark McGwire did more to bring baseball back from the strike than anybody else. That’s what changed my mind, but I want an acknowledgement of steroid use. He needs to talk about the past, he needs to work hard to ensure that no children take the path he took. That they understand that by using steroids, he seriously risked permanent damage to his body, or even drug dependency. The dependency that ultimately stole Ken Caminiti’s life. We cannot cast judgment upon McGwire’s actions, because by sharing in the glory of 1998, everyone in baseball from the Commissioner, to the head of the Players Union, the executives and the people who cover the game (the same ones now passing judgment) all used McGwire to attain what we wanted. Even when androstenedione was thrust into the public consciousness, we chose to ignore. There were no revealing exposes, until Caminiti came forward. For that we share in the culpability and we need to acknowledge our part, but McGwire needs to acknowledge and help heal the damage of what he did. When he does, then he deserves to join the hallowed halls which encapsulate the sordid history that makes baseball’s lore so thick and textured.