So the baseball hall of fame inductees were announced today. No big shocks here as Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. were the only players taken into the hall this year. It was touted as an indictment of the Steroid Era (somehow this has taken on proper noun status) as the Baseball Writers Association of America were going to stonewall Mark McGwire and keep him and his 580+ home runs out. It is to cleanse the game they tell us; that McGwire, Canseco, and the rest of their ilk had sullied the game and made a mockery of the record books. They cheated, or so the media would have us believe.
Or maybe not. Steroids were not against the rules until very recently, and at that, there are still no rules against the most prevalent form of performance enhancement: Human Growth Hormone. But still, the hall must be protected. From cheaters. Like Ty Cobb and all those nasty allegations of fixing games. Like Gaylord Perry who was well known for his doctoring of the baseball. Or from all of the guys who were amped up on amphetamines for forty years, when they were just as illegal as steroids.
Screw it, forget the hypocrisies of the voters on the whole cheating thing, I'd take their moralism much easier if they didn't exhibit unbelievable stupidity every year. The big news this year is that Ripken and Gwynn were elected with near record percentages. Near records, 98-97%. So let me get this straight: We are supposed to accept the moral judgments of writers who clearly have never watched a game. That is the only reason that there can be for no player to ever have been unanimously being elected to this "hall of fame." Babe Ruth? Cy Young? The aforementioned Cobb? NO ONE. What does a person have to do? More importantly, when their credibility is strained to the point of Barry Bond's, why should I give a damn about their opinion, it is clearly less valid than any other fan of the game's.
Oh well, to McGwire, Bert Blyleven, Goose Gossage, Andre Dawson, and Jim Rice (who are some of the greatest players of their generations), if you do ever get inducted to this little club, I'd hope at some point in your acceptance speech, you take these ingrates to task. They style themselves as the protectors of the game, and their actions show that they are merely bitter malcontents who have raised themselves far above the point of their usefulness.
1 comment:
I know nothing about baseball, with the exception of what I learned from The Simpsons episode we all know and love in which Bart and Lisa taunt Strawberry. However, I DO know that no matter how many steroids I took, I'd never be able to hit a ball coming at me at 80+ mph over the heads of nine men. Anyone who can do this deserves to have his picture posted on a wall in a room next to the girls from A League of Their Own.
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