I would suggest that almost everyone already in the HOF "knowingly cheated" the game in some form or fashion. Pud Galvin was an acknowledged PED user. Perry threw a spitter. Ford admittedly cut the ball. Mantle used corked bats. When he caught, Mack made a sound to try to make umps think that a ball was actually a foul tip. Impeding base runners was an art form in the 1890s. It has been a federal crime to use amphetamines without a prescription since 1970. Cocaine is obviously illegal to use as a performance enhancer. Human ingenuity being what it is, there are countless ways to cheat the game and that's always sort of been considered OK so long as you were cheating in order to try to win. Therein lies the huge difference that keeps Jackson out.
To those who want to talk about "integrity," I don't understand that argument very well. If player A cheats by using steroids and hits 70 homers, and player B cheats by using greenies and only hits 30 homers, which one has less integrity? In that example, it is my belief that the integrity of those two players is exactly the same. They both cheated, they both tried to get an unfair advantage, and one of the two was simply more successful. In that same vein, why is cheating more effectively now deemed worse than a less effective method of cheating? If two kids cheat on a test and once makes an A and the other a C, which kid has less integrity? The integrity argument has never made any sense to me and still doesn't.
Steroids happened, just as amphetamine usage and cocaine usage happened, just as corked bats, spitters, cutters, sign stealing, etc. still happen. Saying that steroid users shouldn't be elected because they are cheats is really just a way to try and avoid dealing with the issue, particularly when those who are making that claim seem to have absolutely no issue with any of the other methods of cheating employed by those who have already been elected.
I suspect that part of the reason why some people are more incensed at steroid usage is that there is a perception, valid or not, that the steroid usage type of cheating allowed cherished records to be broken. If so, all I can say, like I have already said, is that I cannot see any logical link between integrity and breaking records. If you tried to get an unfair advantage and simply did it more poorly than someone else, that doesn't give you greater integrity.
Because the HOF has a long and vaunted history of inducting players with somewhat less than perfect integrity, I don't have a problem with inducting those who were the best of their time or, in the case of Bonds and Clemens, among the best of all time. If the HOF wants to note that their accomplishments may have been aided by PEDs, so be it. But it simply cannot be denied that, at least between the lines, some of the greatest players ever were active during a time when everyone's performance is suspect.
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