Peter,
Unlike Travis, Doc Gooden's problems were largely self-inflicted so he doesn't really fit the bill. Conseco, were it not for the steroid issue (again self-inflicted) has a halfway decent case for the hall.
Surely you can come up with better examples than that when explaining why someone who showed absolutely no signs of slowing down -- someone who led the league in hits and hit .359 (second in the league) the year before he entered the service -- someone who had finished in the top ten in average 4 out of the 5 years immediately preceding his induction into the service -- would nonetheless, for some inexplicable reason that you cannot articulate,
have fallen flat on his face during the prime years of his career had he not gone off to fight for his country.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, but I suggest that my hypothesis -- which is that he would have continued to play at a consistently high level during the four years that he missed -- is more supportable than your theory that something "might" have happened to cause that not to occurr.
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