The Hall of Fame is not a boy scout award part II

The Hall of Fame is not a boy scout award, it’s a museum. It refers only to your stats on the field and it's very culpable to favoritism.

The Hall of Fame is about your statistics on the field, nothing else. A lot of it really comes down to favoritism. That’s where it gets uneven and one sided especially because usually steroid users default the validation to earn the rights to Cooperstown yet numerous gym candy users have gotten that elusive call.

Ivan Rodriguez most definitely was a heavy steroid user. It was never proven but there were a handful of accusations and Pudge was named in Jose Canseco’s book “Juiced”. And it’s incomprehensible when you look at how his body stature dissipated in the latter years of his career. But it’s not rocket science. It is summed up by a three-letter acronym: PED’s. So, with all of what I just mentioned, Pudge Rodriguez went into the Hall of Fame on his first year of eligibility gaining 76% of the votes yet no one batted an eyelash to that.

Yet Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell, who never failed a drug test and were not mentioned in the Mitchell Report, took a while to get in. Piazza was enshrined in his third year of eligibility and Bagwell was immortalized in his fifth. They rightfully earned their place in Cooperstown, which was long overdue. There was never any proof that either of those sluggers used performance enhancing drugs it was just hearsay. I know there was never any proof for Pudge either, but his case is far more obvious.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez would have been first ballot Hall of Famers prior to their PED use. But Bonds was jealous that Mark McGwire held the single season home run record and many other reasons why for all three as to why they used an unfair advantage. A-Rod is newer to the ballot but in my humble opinion it is time to finally let Clemens and Bonds into the Hall of Fame and put this discussion to bed. I’m tired of having this conversation every January. It’s time to end it. Steroids or no steroids, all three athletes set unsurpassed standards in baseball. It’s getting hard to envision the Hall of Fame without those guys.

This is where I draw the line in my steroid policy. Sammy Sosa and David Ortiz were average hitters prior to their gym candy use. Rafael Palmeiro would not have gotten to the 500-home run and 3,000 hit marks if not for steroids. Gary Sheffield likely would not have hit 500 home runs without them as well. In Mark McGwire’s 16 seasons only about 4 or 5 of them were unsurmountable. Yes, the rest of his career was all very prominent. But he really was otherworldly for 4 or 5 seasons and the years I’m speaking of were 1996 to 1999 when he already was an 11-year veteran. That’s why those guys except for Ortiz are not in the Hall and likely never will be.

In 2023 after far too long Fred McGriff was finally elected to the Hall on the Contemporary Ballot. How on Earth did it take Crime Dog that long? He played in the steroid era and his name never came up once. He hit 493 career home runs and drove in 1,550 runs. If there was not a strike in 1994, he would have slammed at least 7 dingers prior to the season’s end therefore he would have tallied over the 500-career mark. So, my question is was 500 home runs really his initiation for the Hall? 7 long balls shy isn’t much of a difference. Crime dog also summated 2,490 career hits on the all-time list. Those are more hits by a slight margin than Hall of Famers Enos Slaughter, Ryne Sandberg, Pie Traynor, Mickey Mantle, Jim Rice, Ozzie Smith, Joe Medwick, Harry Hooper, Roger Connor, Frank Thomas, and 2 other recent inductees: David Ortiz and another fellow late Cooperstown bloomer in Ted Simmons.

It also took Larry Walker far too long to be enshrined as well. The wrongs were rewritten in 2022 when FINALLY, after more than 4 decades Gil Hodges, Tony Oliva, and Minnie Minoso entered Baseball’s most hallowed ground. Buck O’Neil also in 2022 received the long-awaited entry to Cooperstown and rightfully so. Buck is in the Hall of Fame not for his play on the field but because he was one of baseball's greatest humanitarians. I know that defaces the title to this article, but Buck was a pioneer who revolutionized the game for the better.

In my prior piece I spoke a lot about David Ortiz getting that elusive call because he is likeable. Some of the criteria for the Hall of Fame includes character, integrity, and being a good teammate. The character clause is very inconsistent. It seems like the writers each year go eeny, meeny, miny, mo on giving someone the nod or not. It’s as if one year they say Let’s let in jerk X. Then the following year we won’t let in jerk Y.

In the first ever Hall of Fame class in 1936 Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were inducted. Those guys both deface all those admirable personality qualities. Yet in the inaugural class those guys got in. That’s as uneven as a seesaw. You can argue that Gaylord Perry shouldn’t have been allowed in the Hall of Fame for using the spitball. It took Orlando Cepeda nearly 20 years to get inducted because he was known as not a great teammate and had many off the field issues.

I could be here all day picking apart the list of Hall of Famers that lack a prestige but their athleticism on the diamond is why they earned the bronze plaque in upstate New York. Once again, it’s not a boy scout award, it’s a museum.