Allowing a known PED user into the Hall would set a dangerous precedent, because if Sosa is in, how could voters logistically keep out stars of the era like Juan Gonzalez or Bagwell? Furthermore, as far as I know the Hall has no policy for removing a person who has already been enshrined, so I suspect the philosophy is to wait a few years to see how this era settles in the minds of the baseball galaxy. Personally, I have come to feel that the great players of the era should be enshrined because I am not willing to wipe out a decade of baseball history because of gaudy stats that don't fall in line with the time periods around them.
This is a Hall of Fame thread, which means individual performance, but I wonder why few people examine the effect PEDs might have had on team standings and even winning pennants and the World Series. Red Sox fans had the catharsis of 2004, and yet Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz have been accused of juicing, and there is no discussion about the authenticity of their team's victory. Is it inconsistent to judge individual players and yet give the teams they played on a pass? 1989 Athletics, what about them?
Baseball fans, and perhaps people in general, seek simple and clear answers, but upon reflection when has baseball ever offered a simple answer to the questions that arise? Every single aspect of and around the game is up for scrutiny, right down to every pitched ball that the hitter doesn't swing at. Strike or ball? It's not clearcut; it's up to the umpire's interpretation, and Livan Hernandez pitched to the most egregiously large strike zone in in the 1997 game that I have ever witnessed. But it's now in the books, forever. Could baseball fans arbitrarily say that Mel Ott should be punished because he hit most of his home runs at a field where an umpire might call 'infield fly rule' on a ball hit to the warning track? Do fans punish Ed Walsh or Burleigh Grimes because they used a pitch that would be eventually deemed 'unfair'? Should Yankee fans feel embarrassed because Jeffrey Maier turned a non-home run into a home run? When fans left baseball after the 1994 strike and said they would never return, well they have their reasons and that is their prerogative. Speaking for myself, I have not and most likely will not leave this game, because the game is beautiful, even though the players and the owners sometimes (often) behave deplorably. How the game was in the Steroid era may not have been (in hindsight) totally permissable, but neither should pre-1947 Major League Baseball be. There is no way to wrap a neat package around this. It's complicated, just like us. Can we possibly conceive in 2012 how we might feel about this PED baseball era in 2062? Is George High Pockets Kelly truly worthy of Hall of Fame enshrinement? He sure has a good nickname though.
Anyway, first post ever. Apologies for the length.
Nat
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