IF I HAD A VOTE IN THE 2013 BASEBALL HALL OF FAME ELECTION, PART 1: A HISTORIC REFERENDUM

MVP and Cy Young: The BBWAA Has Already Spoken

But here is why the vote for first-time candidates Bonds and Clemens will force the issue once and for all despite Palmeiro's case: The BBWAA has already expressed its opinions on Bonds and Clemens previously—and in both cases, they were overwhelmingly positive.

You see, Bonds has been voted his league's Most Valuable Player (MVP) a record-setting seven times. Clemens has been voted his league's Cy Young Award winner a record-setting seven times; Clemens was also voted MVP in his Cy Young year of 1986, an unusual honor for a pitcher. Both the MVP and Cy Young Award are decided by voters from the BBWAA—the same body that votes on Hall of Fame candidacy. Clemens won the Cy Young in 2001 and in 2004, while Bonds was voted MVP four consecutive times from 2001 to 2004, right in the teeth of the so-called Steroids Era.

How can the same body, the BBWAA, that blessed Bonds and Clemens for their seasonal accomplishments—particularly Bonds, bestowed with MVP awards as the PEDs controversy heated to a boil—now deny the two the sum total of those seasonal accomplishments, their place in the Hall of Fame?

This is a collective charge, not an individual one; I do not know if any of the BBWAA voters who voted for any of Bonds's MVPs and Clemens's Cy Youngs are also voters for this year's Hall of Fame ballot. But as a collective body the BBWAA is responsible for the seasonal awards and for the lifetime legacy of Hall of Fame enshrinement, and it will be conspicuous—indeed glaring—for the collective writers to now deny Bonds and Clemens entrance to Cooperstown after having showered them with unprecedented numbers of MVP and Cy Young awards. This was not a factor with either Palmeiro or McGwire. Palmeiro's best MVP finish was fifth, in 1999. McGwire's best MVP showing was as a distant runner-up to Sammy Sosa in 1998, when both broke Roger Maris's single-season home run record. Sosa's own case also comes under scrutiny this year.

The PEDs Problem: The Nutshell

The use of PEDs in baseball has produced a moral dudgeon unrivaled in the sport since eight players from the Chicago White Sox were caught colluding with gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. It has also produced a witch-hunt hysteria unrivaled since the anti-Communist fervor of both Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s.

Those objecting to the use of PEDs in baseball claim that the very foundations of the sport have been shaken by those "cheaters" who have engineered an unfair advantage by artificially enhancing their physical capabilities through consumption of anabolic steroids or human growth hormones (HGH). This was the position taken by the committee chaired by former Senator George Mitchell (Dem.-Maine) that investigated PEDs usage in baseball; its 2007 report to Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig stressed the illegality of using PEDs while asserting that their use "poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game" and "raises questions about the validity of baseball records" (both quotes from the Mitchell Report). Mitchell's investigation faulted all of Major League Baseball for its failure to act, including the Major League Baseball Players' Association (MBLPA), the players' union, which proved quite reluctant to cooperate with Mitchell's investigation and had opposed any kind of drug program, including mandatory testing, until 2002.

Since 1971, any prescription drug without a valid prescription had been prohibited by MLB, and steroids were expressly stated as part of this policy by 1991, but it wasn't until 2002 that this prohibition was added to the collective bargaining agreement, which then included provisions for mandatory random testing. However, players soon switched to HGH as that was undetectable by the then-current tests. But just to illustrate the haphazard nature of testing and legality, Mark McGwire was spotted in 1998 with an open container of androstenedione, a precursor to anabolic steroids, in his locker, although "andro" was not yet on the list of banned substances at that time, even though other sports bodies including the National Football League (NFL), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had banned it.

By 2005 the PEDs issue was blown across the headlines when Jose Canseco published his tell-all memoir Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big (Regan Books), which solidified all previous comment and speculation about PEDs usage in baseball while naming all kinds of names. Canseco's book spurred a Congressional investigation and Mitchell's investigation, and from then on PEDs have cast a pall over baseball. Drug testing has become more stringent, with penalties becoming more severe—a third violation results in a lifetime ban from baseball—and an entire decade of baseball, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, is now considered tainted because of the players—what is the number? 30 percent? 50 percent? everyone?—suspected of, or admitting to, using PEDs.

But what are the real, actual consequences of PEDs on baseball? Using PEDs will make you a stronger player, but they will not make you a better player in terms of skill. Yes, the most obvious effects are on hitting a ball farther, with the direct result being an increase in home runs, and throwing a ball faster. The dramatic growth in home run production during this time is the crown jewel in the case against PEDs. But it is interesting that the proportion of hitters using PEDs and pitchers using PEDs is roughly equal, which of course prompts the question: At what point does PEDs usage become a zero-sum game? The pitcher who served up home run number 755 to Barry Bonds, which tied him with Hank Aaron for the lifetime record, was Clay Hensley, who had been suspended for ten games in the minor leagues in 2005 for testing positive for banned substances; Bonds of course was by then a poster boy for PEDs. Leaving aside the gross disparities in skill—how many pitchers could be a match for Bonds? maybe only Clemens?—were they not evenly matched? And largely ignored has been the increase in both aggregate strikeout rates and strikeout totals since the mid-1990s.

But home runs are sexy (and as Kevin Costner's Crash Davis put it in Bull Durham, strikeouts are fascist), so it is to the long ball that we turn now.