We all know by now that Jeff Bagwell was snubbed on his first hall of fame ballot by the BBWAA. The collective excuse seems to have been that he was just too fit, too shaped, too good to not be taking steroids. At no point has Bagwell’s name ever been connected with steroids in any way, shape or form, but he was a big, strong hitter in the 1990s, so he is guilty until proven innocent.
Jeff Bagwell will not be the last victim of this newfound righteous indignation, and at some point he will probably be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but hopefully the ridiculousness of his case calls attention to the stupidity of the BBWAA’s voters and voting process. Jeff Bagwell’s only sin was that he played during the 1990s, a time when offense soared in the majors in part because of steroid use.
Here is the argument I would like to make: No player should be denied entry to the Hall of Fame because of steroid use – suspected, confirmed, whatever. For most of league history, a wide variety of performance enhancing drugs, including McGwire’s alleged drug of choice Androstenedione, were completely legal both in baseball and wider society. It is absolutely ridiculously that Mark McGwire – one of the best sluggers ever – is being kept out of the Hall of Fame because he benefited from the use of performance enhancers that were both ubiquitous and legal.
Furthermore, even if performance enhancing drugs are considered cheating, there is no precedent to use cheating (except in the case of gambling) to deny a player entrance to the Hall of Fame. Players like John McGraw, Ty Cobb, Joe Niekro, and Whitey Ford were notorious cheaters and dirty players, but were inducted without controversy. The biggest complaint against Gaylord Perry was not that he openly admitted to doctoring balls (and would literally taunt players on the mound by pretending to do so), but that his W-L record had too many losses. And let’s not even get into corked bats.
And let’s not pretend that steroids were some new, particularly powerful form of (completely legal and accepted) cheating that happened to emerge in the 1990s. Jose Canseco in his book claimed that he used steroids in the 1980s to get from the minors to the major leagues. Mike Schmidt admitted in his book that performance enhancing drugs were freely given out in his major league clubhouses in the 1970s.
The 1990s saw a huge surge of home runs for a number of reasons. One was probably that medical science increased the potency of the performance enhancing drugs that were already in use. But that was only one reason – ballparks were smaller, pitchers weren’t allowed to push batters off the plate, managers got stupid using relief pitchers, college players grew up using aluminum bats instead of wooden ones – among many.
This wouldn’t break a rational Hall of Fame voting process, but it does mess with the assumptions made by scores of retired BBWAA writers who are either too dumb or too disconnected to compare hitters against their peers and vote for the Hall of Fame accordingly. The home run surge of the 1990s probably messes with the “500 home run club = Hall of Fame” rule that the writers had leaned on so heavily for so long. If we let a worthy group of people pick who does and does not enter the Hall of Fame, this would not be a problem. If performance enhancing drugs – or corked bats, or doctored balls, or McGraw/Cobb dirty tricks – were generally accepted as a means of playing better, then we should have no problem judging an environment where many or most players benefited from their use.
The counterfactuals bear this out. If Mark McGwire hadn’t used andro (and no one else did too), do you really think he wouldn’t have been a top-10 hitter of his generation? Of course he would be – McGwire hit 49 home runs his rookie year, and set records in high school. If Barry Bonds hadn’t taken whatever he took, would he not still go down as the greatest hitter of the 1990s? Of course he would have. Had Roger Clemens not taken steroids, wouldn’t he still have been one of the best pitchers of all time?
I find it difficult in any way to defend steroids as some kind of moral affront without completely divorcing yourself from baseball history.
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12 Responses to Steroids, the 90s, and the Hall of Fame
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TIQ IQ
Nice piece E.J. A couple of points I disagree with though: McGwire has admitted to using more than just Andro from GNC. Steroids are ilegal to use/posess in America without a Dr’s. Prescription and monitoring. So yes all the guys who took roids were breaking laws of the country which superseed laws of MLB. Roids have been illegal for many years in America, they did not become illegal when Baseball took it’s head out of it’s a$$ a couple of years ago.
Bonds is a great case study. He was a wonderful player pre-dope. He was similar to Roberto Clemente (minus the arm) a great player having a HOF career. After he developed into the hulk he went from a great HOF player into the best player ever! He of course did this while on the wrong side of 30 to boot. So right there that tells you enhancing your body does raise your game.
McGwire did hit 49 homers as a rookie, he than sucked for years and was basically Gorman Thomas or Dave Kingman. There are lots of guys who blow up their first year (Kevin Maas) and than tail off and are never as good. When McGwire went full on beast mode years later he had the same comically muscled body as other guys who suddenly got lots better.
Bagwell probably gets into the HOF. Bagwell also went from being small/normal to very heavily muscled very quickly. No dirty tests, no actual proof, I understand. I have 0 problem with the voters making him wait a couple of years before he gets in just because his career is very suspicious.
Lastly who’s names exactly do people think are on the list of 100+ players who tested dirty on the announced non-random test MLB conducted? One out of Seven guys failed that test so who the hell knows how many other users were smart enough to stop juicing in time for the test? The game goes on, so does the Hall, many users will get in, fine. There is enough smoke around many of these guys that being denied a first ballot enshrinement doesn’t bother me at all.
Depending on when you think Bonds started using, Bonds pre-dope was still one of the top 20-25 players of all time.
“He was similar to Roberto Clemente (minus the arm) a great player having a HOF career.”
Huh? Through age 27, Bonds (Pitt years only) had a 146 OPS+ to Clemente’s 102 OPS+.
which makes it so perverse, that he would take known damaging chemicals to turn himself into the Hulk.
Wow Repoz, you are being so literal. Can we agree that Clemente’s career spanned a period of time where offense was down? Do you even know that Clemente played with the 15 inch tall mound for most of his career? The mound was lowered in 1969 when Clemente was 34 and only had 4 years with the lowered mound height. So like I said before they were both very similar players. High averages, great fielders, nice power numbers FOR THEIR TIME.
Moshe, like I said Bonds was a great player no matter how you slice it. Certainly in the top 25-35 of all time before the juice.
OPS+ adjusts based upon average production during a player’s playing days.
Steroids is ten times worse than throwing a spitball or whatever.It makes you a different person, you aren’t cheating by skillfully doctoring a ball , something most pitchers couldn’t do or control, you’re changing your body forever, making it better then your genetics would have allowed you to be without it.
It’s an entirely different story.
The entire era is in question.
Peds have been outlawed in legitimate althletic competition beginning with the 1950′s. The way innocence/guilt has been adjudged since that time is through drug testing, ie, the competitor proves his innocence and without that proof he is adjudged guilty..
The standard that has been established for decades vis-a-vis peds usage in any honest athletic competition is that the assumption of guilt is applicable. Missing tests disqualifies. In an era where ped use was prevalent, mlb players ran away as a body from testing and the only valid way to be adjudged innocent of ped usage and avoid the assignment of guilt. There is no other way.
This is 2011. Rather late in the game to be honoring something that has been consideted so beyond fair play as to be summarily disqualifiable in sports competion for 60 plus years. The delay regarding baseball impugns baseball – its players and management far more than any other entity associated with baseball.
If a reporter wants to confer innocence to a particular steroid era player as a generous gesture of giving the benefit of the doubt and believing that player didn’t use, fine, but don’t think he’s obligated to vote for any of these guys of that era if his objective is to keep ped users out.
And honoring ped users in 2011 and beyond would be a sick joke. It shouldn’t even be viewed as in any way acceptable.
The “innocent til proven guilty” crowd are the ones who should get off their moral high horse attacking the character of such voters since the attacks go to their character. That they’re mostly for letting all roiders in tells that they don’t really give a rat’s behind about whether Bagwell used or not. They are for the permanent surrender to the reality that baseball has destroyed its integrity with no hope ever for its restoration.
This is absurd. The fact that they didn’t allow testing as a group does not make them equivalent to those who miss tests. It is a false equivalency that allows you to apply the moral judgment that you want to make without the evidence necessary to do so.
Even if you assume that every heavily-muscled, or even every successful, baseball player during the 1990s and early 2000s was using steroids, I do not see why HOF voting has become a proxy for the punishment that didn’t exist during that time.
Bagwell was a fantastic baseball player–head and shoulders above nearly every other hitter in the game. That, whether he did it with steroids or not, deserves recognition and acclaim in any museum of baseball.
In any case, your last point is your worst. I see absolutely no reason for anyone, in any case, not to be “for a permanent surrender to reality.”
“Can we agree that Clemente’s career spanned a period of time where offense was down? Do you even know that Clemente played with the 15 inch tall mound for most of his career? The mound was lowered in 1969 when Clemente was 34 and only had 4 years with the lowered mound height. So like I said before they were both very similar players. High averages, great fielders, nice power numbers FOR THEIR TIME. ”
OPS+ takes all of this into account. Which is why under the same conditions Hank Aaron had a 158 OPS+ during the same time span.
As new steroids are developed there will always be those who will think they can beat the system. And they will… for a while.