Cheaters Shouldn’t Be Voted Into the National Baseball Hall of Fame

My son plays high school baseball. He’s been playing for more than a decade and has grown into a fairly accomplished catcher and outfielder. As a sophomore last year, he was one of only two players on his varsity team to play in every game on the season (the other was a senior who was both the team’s best third baseman and best pitcher). Assuming he doesn’t suffer a devastating injury (knock on wood!) or lose his drive (which seems unlikely given that it’s significantly harder to keep him from pushing himself than it is to motivate him), he will play somewhere in college. If he has a decent college career, he may eventually get drafted and then… Who knows?

I’ve been his coach through much of his playing days. I was on the coaching staff of his first T-ball team. I remained at least an assistant coach on all but three of his youth baseball teams, head coaching seven of them. Even now that he’s moved onto his high school team (during the Spring) and travel ball (the rest of the year), I still remain his private hitting coach. Through all of that, I have maintained that he conduct himself the right way.

What does that mean for a youth/high school baseball player?

Personally, I divide that up into two categories. One, he treat everybody else (teammates, opponents, coaches of all teams, umpires, and parents/families/spectators) with absolute respect. Two, he will not cheat.

These have been two absolutes. If either of these were broken, there would be consequences. Extra running. Getting yanked from a game. Missing a game or games.

I still think this way. Cheating should be punished, not rewarded. If you get caught, the consequences should have no special exceptions.

I view Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens this way. While neither were technically caught (that is, neither failed drug tests exposing their respective usage of performance enhancing drugs), the anecdotal evidence is so overwhelming that to deny the actions of these two players is to essentially live in an alternate reality.

It should also be noted that a significant reason why they were never caught is because there was no stipulation in the collective bargaining agreement of the time for PED tests. That wouldn’t happen until the very twilights of their careers. It should also be acknowledged that, over the years, both players have given cryptic and hinting confirmations that they used banned substances.

As anybody who follows baseball knows, these two players fell short this week in their final chances to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (each may still eventually be elected by the Vererans’ Committee). As has happened over the last ten years in which their names appeared on the ballot, there was much debate this week about their candidacies.

While neither made it, there seemed to be significantly louder support for their induction this year than in years past. Jeff Passan, of ESPN, wrote in support of Bonds’ induction, labeling the HoF a failure if the BBWAA failed to do so. His argument largely amounted to two points: one, that everybody was using PEDs during Bonds’ career (I know of no evidence that supports this sweeping statement, though I concede that I’ve heard some players make that claim in the past); and two, that the HoF is supposed to be a museum of baseball history and that, by not inducting Bonds, it is ignoring history.

I picked on Passan because his arguments succinctly summarize what I’ve seen broadly for Bonds and Clemens supporters (among others). These arguments are garbage, though.

Starting with the first one… Everybody was using PEDs? Taken literally, this is a hugely sweeping statement, indicting an entire generation of players of using steroids and other banned enhancers without even circumstantial evidence to support it. Even the 400-plus page Mitchell Report, an exhaustive investigation spearheaded by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, concluded that only five to seven percent of players failed steroid tests.

But, even if we could conclusively agree to such a statement, is that justification for allowing (and rewarding) the behavior? If every student in a class is cheating on a test, should the teacher reward each one with a perfect grade (or even a passing one)? Does criminal behavior become less criminal because more people are doing it? Is this really the message that we want to be sending to our young baseball players (and athletes from other sports, as well)? It’s okay to cheat if other players are doing it, too?

I just can’t get there and I find it mortifying that fellow adults are condoning this way of thinking.

The second reason seems even more far-fetched to me. Enshrinement to the HoF is supposed to be the ultimate personal achievement for a baseball player. There should be no higher honor. I do not deny that mention of Bonds, Clemens, and other PED users should absolutely be included in the museum, as the two of them were among the most dominant players at their respective positions in the history of the sport. I do not believe the way to do that is to reward such players with the game’s pinnacle individual accomplishment.

Over the years, friends and acquaintances of mine have told me that my position is too strict. That I should have forgiveness in my heart for these former players. This argument also does not resonate with me, in large part because my position is not based upon any sort of personal animus towards them. I just believe that if a player is going to choose to break the rules to gain a competitive advantage and they are caught doing so, there should be a consequence to that action that does not diminish over time. After all, would it have been anything more than a slap on the wrist if Bonds and Clemens simply had to wait a few extra years for enshrinement? And, if we all want to get serious about curtailing this type of cheating, how does that “forgiveness” advance that goal?

I can acknowledge that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and a number of other players during the steroid era were fantastic players, deserving of HoF induction based solely on their statistics, and even fun players to watch (I concede that the home run race in 1998 remains one of the most enjoyable summers of baseball watching of my life). But, if those on-field accomplishments were achieved artificially, those accomplishments and the players responsible for them should be documented in the HoF museum without rewarding the players with the most sought-after form of baseball immortality.