It's been a rough week for Major League Baseball. In the middle of a summer filled with exciting stories of resurgent teams and under-performing superstar collections, incidents revolving around performance-enhancing drugs have marred America's national pastime.
On a rainy Sunday afternoon last week, the Baseball Hall of Fame inducted three new members. The event, usually a great celebration of the game, was notably quiet. For the first time in 48 years, no living player was selected the three honorees have now been dead for a total of more than 200 years.
One of the main reasons for this anomaly is that many of the stars caught up in the 2002 BALCO scandal, in which they testified before a grand jury about their drug use, became eligible for induction this year. As it demonstrated in last week's ceremony, the Baseball Writers' Association of America must continue to deny baseball's highest honor to cheaters.
Names like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire are all famous for their record-setting careers but have seen their Hall of Fame candidacies tarnished by steroid use accusations. While active, these stars were considered first ballot hall-of-famers. After revelations of their illegal drug use, however, they each received under 40 percent of the vote from the writers' association.
Many try to look back on these players' era as a dark age, pointing to new testing and harsh suspension policies as a sign that the game has moved forward. But yesterday's suspension of players, including Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees and Nelson Cruz of the Texas Rangers, combined with last month's suspension of 2011 MVP Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers, have brought the issue of performance-enhancing drugs back to the forefront of baseball.
The suspensions are already having league-wide repercussions. Some teams, like the Detroit Tigers, were forced to scramble to find replacements for their suspended stars as they started their playoff push. The Tigers traded for Jose Iglesias last week to fill the gap left by the suspended Jhonny Peralta.
Others, like the Yankees, might consider themselves fortunate to have a player suspended. The Bronx Bombers appear to be on the brink of receiving a get-out-of-jail-free card that could release them from the tens of millions of dollars they owe Rodriguez who, in the best case scenario, would have only been a mild contributor over the final four seasons of his contract.
In 1991, then-commissioner Fay Vincent was the first to ban steroids, but the league did not actually begin a testing program for the drugs until 2004. Obviously a difference has historically existed between the league's stated policies and their enforcement.
Without a doubt, the home run chases of 1998 and 2001 created significant interest and enthusiasm in baseball and helped rescue the sport from the low of the 1994 players strike. A steroid-induced bubble, however, was almost inevitable if the drugs had positive performance effects and were banned only in name.
The Hall of Fame has evolved into more than a statistical analysis designating the best players in history with mathematical calculations. Members gain a mythical status, and the organization enshrines the game's greatest stars with a sense of immortality. Every year, hundreds of thousands make the pilgrimage to Cooperstown, N.Y., to visit the hall, its unrivaled baseball museum filled with artifacts from every era of the game and the gallery filled with bronze plaques commemorating each inductee. If baseball wants to move past the steroid era's smear, it cannot give guilty players the highest honor of enshrinement in such an esteemed fraternity.
Names should not be erased from the record books nor should they be marked by an asterisk. But giving guilty players a final honor that has no concrete guidelines seems to justify their actions. The Hall of Fame says it judges a player on his record, playing ability, integrity, character and team contributions. These players clearly fail many levels of this test. If the league does not suspend all guilty players, including all stars, it proclaims that it's okay to cheat, as long as you become the best and don't get caught while you make your mark. This is an unwise message to send, and the writers' association must decide to help the sport move beyond scandal by continuing to not elect cheaters.
