Should Baseball Players Who Have Used Banned Substances Be Voted into the Hall of Fame?

“[W]e recognize that many hold the position that zero players with ties to PEDs should be allowed into Cooperstown. As Joe Morgan relayed in an open letter in 2017, this is the official position of players who are already in the Hall of Fame: “We hope the day never comes when known steroid users are voted into the Hall of Fame. They cheated. Steroid users don’t belong here.”

However, allow us to… [explain] why we favor a case-by-case approach…

There’s no doubting the sincerity of those who believe Cooperstown is no place for juicers. Rather, the issue with that notion is one of naivete.

Per George Mitchell’s 2007 report on PEDs in baseball, steroids had infiltrated MLB at least a decade before Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased down Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in 1998. Heck, one former major leaguer has claimed steroids were in the game as far back as the 1960s.

If true, baseball’s Steroid Era wasn’t limited to the late 1990s and early 2000s. That, in turn, lends credence to whispers… that there are already users in the Hall’s halls…

Lastly, there’s the Bud Selig conundrum. If the commissioner can be in the Hall of Fame despite his failings during the Steroid Era, the same standard should be applied to players who defined the era.”

“The criteria for Hall of Fame selection by the voting writers are “the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to the teams on which the player played.” The baseball writers need to reach an honest consensus on whether steroid use disqualifies a player and be upfront about it. Bud Selig was commissioner during this period, and he is in the Hall…

If history is being rewritten and the steroid era has given us grounds for exclusion, the baseball writers should say so. Amphetamine use was once rampant; Mets star Daryl Strawberry commented: “You take amphetamines and the ball looks so big. It’s like you could hit anything.” Eleven players were suspended by MLB for amphetamine use. Use of that drug has not been openly cited as a criterion for exclusion. It is unfair to leave players like Bonds and Clemens out of the Hall unless the criteria are openly agreed on and real proof is presented of drug use.”

“Baseball Hall of Fame voting season has become one of my least favorite seasons on the annual sporting calendar. The grandstanding and discourse around the HOF voting has become just the worst. We saw it once again yesterday [Jan. 26, 2021], when, for the ninth time in history, we found out that no players will be inducted as part of the 2021 HOF class…

The HOF can bury its head in the sand and try to pretend the steroid era didn’t exist, but Bonds is in the record books as baseball’s home run leader and he’s indisputably one of the best to ever play the game. He was well on his way to a Cooperstown-worthy career before the steroids — I mean, he was intentionally walked with the bases loaded in 1998 (a year before it’s believed he started juicing) and that should be an automatic induction.

Instead of completely shunning these obviously legendary talents that were tied to a league-wide steroid problem, why not just start a steroid wing of the HOF and let them have a semi-tainted induction that matches their semi-tainted career?”

“There are some great names on the [2020 Hall of Fame] ballot. They’re just all tainted because they played in the steroid era — Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez and Sammy Sosa.

Clemens and Bonds have been getting more votes in recent years. This is the year they should go in. Along with the others.

Many voters would have to hold their nose to check those boxes. But what better year to put them in than 2020? It’s been a year like no other in so many other ways.

Vote them all in together and get it over with.

These players, along with two others who didn’t make the cut, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, were super-talented. They were locks for the Hall of Fame if they hadn’t been caught up in allegations of performance-enhancing substances. For a few, that’s all it was, allegations. Others failed tests or admitted to using…

Allegations of steroids in baseball were tough to stomach. But shunning some of baseball’s best isn’t the answer.

Put them in, and note on their plaques any verified use of performance-enhancing drugs. Then move on.”

“Consider the story of Adrian Constantine ‘Cap’ Anson.

Cooperstown officially opened its museum doors on June 12, 1939. Anson, considered the greatest player and manager of the 19th century, was among the class of ’39 after being voted in posthumously by the Veterans Committee. He had the stats: The first member of baseball’s 3,000-hit club, he led the league in RBIs eight times and was a four-time batting champion who averaged .415 in 1872 and .399 in 1881, albeit in far fewer games than today’s standards (and even those numbers are apocryphal).

Anson, as many baseball purists are well aware, was a racist. Famously, on July 14, 1887, Anson, of the Chicago White Stockings, refused to play against the Newark Little Giants because of its black pitcher, George Stovey. It wasn’t the first time Anson had objected to competing against black players. But on this particular day, the directors of the International League met and decided that contracts would no longer be offered to black men except for those already employed in the league. In a separate gentlemen’s agreement, blacks were excluded from the major leagues beginning in 1885 and baseball’s color barrier would last another 60 years, until the name Jackie Robinson entered the American conscience and changed the course of history.

How can Major League Baseball, which proudly celebrates Robinson’s legacy every season, continue to keep Anson, who has become synonymous with the history of segregation in baseball, in its most hallowed halls while Bonds remains a pariah? Segregation was far more destructive than performance-enhancing drugs in regards to evaluating talent in baseball. This much is irrefutable. Baseball history would be completely different if players such as Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige had been given the opportunity to suit up against Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.”

“Enough already with talk of how inducting players who used illegal performance-enhancing drugs will ‘ruin’ the Hall, or relax’ its standards… To the contrary, the Hall’s only chance of being saved from irrelevance, of gaining acquittal from the serious charge of selective outrage, is for these guys to gain their earned place. For the voters to understand that their mission is not to police player-on-player crimes, but rather to look after the consumer, who has never been impacted one iota by illegal PED usage.”

“If you are keeping two of the greatest players in baseball history out of Cooperstown because they allegedly used performance-enhancing drugs, then I have a simple question.

Who didn’t?

That’s right. Name a single player, let’s say from 1984 through 2007, that never once experimented with PEDs, or leaned on them to speed up the rehab process, or dabbled to get some extra kick during a contract year.

Problem is, you can’t.”

“Barry Bonds deserves to be in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He does. You can’t keep the greatest player ever out of the game’s museum of best players… Bonds, whose career was clouded with steroid and performance-enhancing drug allegations, most certainly deserves enshrinement in the Hall.

It’s silly to pretend Bonds isn’t the single greatest power hitter in the modern era. He crushed a Major League-record 762 home runs and is baseball’s disputed home run king. He earned more walks than anyone in the history of the game, because he’s the most feared hitter to ever live… He won the 1990 and 1992 National League Most Valuable Player award with the Pirates. Bonds hit more than 30 home runs, stole more than 30 bases and hit higher than .300 in each of those seasons. It was clear that even before the steroid allegations he was a rare talent heading for superstardom.”

“The National Baseball Hall of Fame has done a poor job acknowledging some of the top players in MLB history in recent years…

The Hall of Fame should be about recognizing the achievements of the players, regardless of what it took for them to do it. Are we supposed to just pretend Barry Bonds never set the all-time home run record or that he never hit 73 home runs in a season? Are we supposed to pretend the great home run chase of 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa never happened and did not help the league’s popularity after the 1994 strike?”

“I think Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, A Rod and the rest should be allowed into the Hall. History will define this period as the Steroid Era, and the court of public opinion will provide the necessary asterisk… [H]ow can you dismiss the guilty if you don’t really know who was clean? That’s not fair to the innocent and I feel for those clean players who are now guilty by association.”

“What the last 30 years should have taught us, and the Biogenesis scandal reminded us, is that we have absolutely no idea who was clean, and who was dirty… I vote for the players who had Hall of Fame careers, regardless of their connections to steroids and performance-enhancing drugs… Come on, this isn’t the Sistine Chapel. We’ve let murderers, racists, and abusers in the Hall of Fame.

If you wanted to kick out every Hall of Fame player who ever illegally used amphetamines, you’d be able to fit the remaining players in an airplane bathroom.”