Hall of Fame Poll: Mark McGwire
by Tom Dakers on Dec 5, 2009 2:39 PM EST
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PrintI'm sure you know the story as well as I do, great numbers: 583 homers,1414 RBI in a 16 year career and a batting line of .263/.394/.588. 12 All-Star games, Rookie of the Year in 1987, even a Gold Glove. But a large shadow over his career. In his three years on the ballot he has been under 25% of the vote each time.
His career numbers are here.
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I'm a little bit surprised at the results so far.
To me, if you intend to punish 1 or 2 guys for their involvement in the steroid era, then you punish EVERYONE who played in the steroid era. If you intend to allow any guys in who had great numbers during the time, then you have to allow those in who have been “proven” to have used. I say proven in quotations because there’s still a very large list of players out there that hasn’t been released and even then, I’ve never really trusted testing procedures because of some of the ridiculous circuses that have come of other sports’ drug tests (Lance Armstrong for example).
I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby
Well I think the other guys that will get punished are still to come
Barry Bonds will get the same treatment. I don’t know who else on the current ballot you would consider a user.
Well, I guess that's fair
Though I won’t really argue too hard on this, the whole PEDs thing is frustrating and silly in my mind.
I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby
For me, the only thing that counts against McGwire is his injury history. He spent an awful lot of time on the bench. As well, McGwire’s entire ‘scandal’ to me is a little ridiculous. He used steriods when they were legal in order to rebound from injury quicker. This wasn’t like Bonds, who mysteriously tripled in size over one off season. McGwire was always a huge power hitter, and the only real difference that anything made was in his recovery time.
Androstenedione wasn’t banned from baseball until 2004, and that’s the only drug he’s ever been linked to. Androstenedione primarily works in regenerating muscle tissue and negating the effects of overtraining or, in baseball’s case, the standard wear and tear of the 162 game season. McGwire had basically the same profile his entire career; big power hitter strikeout guy who started taking walks about halfway through his career. This was not a Palmerio or Bonds who basically switched into major HR only guys halfway through their career.
Illegal substances were always banned.
If it was illegal to buy over the counter it was banned. Expecting baseball to list every illegal substance is expecting a lot, baseball wasn’t going to guess what the next thing was, so they said if it is illegal to buy it is banned. And of course, saying he was the same guy ignores that his home run rate took a jump in his 30’s.
Vote for him, don’t vote for him, doesn’t matter, really only the writer’s vote counts, but pretending he did nothing wrong is stretching things.
Androstenedione
Was legal and over the counter when he was taking it. That’s the point. He took a conditioning drug for the purposes that it was marketed for. It was legal under U.S. law and for use in MLB at the time, which is why I have the issue with what’s gone on around it. Did McGwire use other drugs? Possibly. But does that mean we should be factoring speculation into whether or not people are worth consideration for the HoF? Personally, I think it’s a double standard; agree or disagree, McGwire has never admitted to the use of any other drug than a totally legal, over the counter one that later got banned and he’s never been connected to any other form of PED.
Oh well...
We do this argument every time we come close to talking about steroids, a while back I got a nasty, semi literate email from a Barry Bonds fan telling me a)Bonds never used and b)they don’t work anyway and c) I know knowing about baseball, so no one cares what I think.
I personally wouldn’t vote McGwire in, at the moment. His sitting in front on a committee in Washington saying ‘I didn’t come here to talk about the past’ is pretty much enough for me. Mark, that’s why you were there. If we are waiting for him to admit he took other things, that’s not going to happen. But then if we only vote no on guys that admit they took something then everyone goes in. Bonds hasn’t admitted anything either. If he were to come clean and talk about it all, then I’d likely rethink him.
The problem is, though, that what criteria do we use? If McGwire was on other drugs, I don’t have a problem saying ‘you used illegal substances and got busted, you’re out’. The problem I see is a double standard. Androstenedione was not some unknown lab concoction the MLB hadn’t heard of before. It was a widely known drug that was used by professional and amateur athletes and at the time, sanctioned for use by the MLB.
It’s not solely a question of admission. The Mitchell Report is going to damn a lot of baseball players for illegal use. Clemans should never get into the Hall of Fame if he is convicted of the use of HRH and Wistrol because they were banned at the time. But at what point does assumption become the deciding factor in weighting his career?
I suppose
if you believe that McGwire only used Andro, then there’s no reason at all not to vote for him. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to think that voters have to wait for a federal drug conviction to conclude that a player used illegal (and therefore banned) PEDs.
Maybe no one can ever know for sure, but folks can make up their own minds. Moreover, the need for proof beyond a reasonable doubt that accompanies a criminal drug proceeding really has no relevance to voting for the HoF. At the very, very least, the preponderance of evidence standard (more likely than not, or 50.01% likely that he did) would apply so while a conviction would be sufficient to disqualify someone (if you believed PEDs should be a disqualifier) it would never be necessary. And it’s hard to say that a reasonable person couldn’t conclude from the circumstantial evidence available that it is more likely than not that McGwire used and then factor that into his voting.
"Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our closed rooms... The game of ball is glorious." - Walt Whitman
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