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

From "Pick-Me-Ups" to PEDs

Even after integration, during the so-called "Golden Era" of baseball in the 1950s and 1960s that saw Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Bob Gibson playing on equal terms with Al Kaline, Mickey Mantle, and Sandy Koufax, allegations of rampant "greenie" use—the widespread use of amphetamines by big-league ballplayers—began to surface starting with former major-league pitcher Jim Bouton's groundbreaking 1969 exposé Ball Four (World). Perhaps because the effects of amphetamine are transitory its usage is distinguished from that of PEDs such as anabolic steroids and human growth hormones; as recently as 2011, renowned broadcaster Bob Costas, critical of the Steroid Era, on MLB TV differentiated the usage of amphetamines by stating that players used them only as a "pick-me-up" after a redeye flight or double header. But isn't a "greenie" still a drug used to enhance performance? Does it matter that its effects are transitory and not more lasting?

And we haven't yet mentioned that there are already suspected steroids users in the Hall of Fame.

Jim "Pud" Galvin—the "Pud" was short for "Pudding," which was what Galvin's pitching reputedly turned hitters into—won 365 games in the last quarter of the 19th century, for which Galvin was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1965 by the Veterans' Committee. Galvin is also the first player widely known for using performance-enhancing drugs: He openly used a concoction known as "Brown-Séquard elixir," which contained monkey testosterone.

Babe Ruth's famous 1925 "bellyache heard 'round the world" might have been caused by the Bambino's attempt to inject himself with an extract from sheep's testicles. It was widely reported at the time that Ruth had overindulged on hot dogs and soda pop, although Ruth was also famously fond of stronger libation—which was illegal.

During Barry Bonds's grim pursuit of Hank Aaron's career home run record, detractors decrying Bonds's PEDs usage held up signs that stated that "Hank Aaron did it with class" (although we do not know whether he might have also done it with amphetamines). Boo-birds also held up signs that stated that "Babe Ruth did it with hot dogs and beer." Even ESPN Baseball color commentator (and Hall of Famer) Joe Morgan had the presence of mind to note that for much of the time in which Ruth was "doing it," beer—alcohol—was an expressly illegal substance. In fact, from 1920 to 1933 alcohol was Constitutionally prohibited in the United States because of passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Never mind that this Amendment and its ramifications was monumentally short-sighted and destructive, forcing the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcohol into the hands of organized crime (mirroring the effects of the disastrous four-decade-old "War on Drugs" currently, but that is another story), and it remains the only Constitutional Amendment to be repealed, by the Twenty-first Amendment. In Ruth's day it was literally the law of the land, and Ruth broke it repeatedly and gleefully.

And speaking of alcohol, another famed hard-drinking Yankee, Mickey Mantle, might not have had to worry about its legality by the time he was playing baseball (as first detailed by Bouton's Ball Four), but he too might have also been a user of performance-enhancing drugs. As he and teammate Roger Maris were chasing Ruth's single-season home run record in 1961, Mantle developed an abscess on his hip allegedly caused by a botched injection of a chemical cocktail that included steroids and amphetamines. Mantle faded in the chase (he finished with 54 homers), enabling Maris to beat the Babe's record.

And although pitcher Tom House is not a Hall of Fame player, he has been candid about the use of steroids in the 1970s, admitting that he himself used them along with many other pitchers, although he claims that their use did not help his velocity and caused him more physical problems than benefits. (House was the pitcher in the Atlanta Braves' bullpen who caught Aaron's then-record-breaking 715th home run in 1974.)

Home-Field Advantages: Park Effects

We should also mention the very real consequences of "park effects," or the impact of a player's home ballpark on his performance. Historically, ballparks have had custom dimensions that can affect how well or how poorly a player performs in his home park: A "hitter-friendly" park will benefit batters and penalize pitchers, and vice versa. It is a phenomenon that has been long understood but one that has not always factored into overall evaluations.

Philadelphia Phillies' outfielder Chuck Klein, eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame, terrorized pitchers during the late 1920s and early 1930s in his home park the Baker Bowl, a notoriously hitter-friendly park; when he was traded to the Chicago Cubs in 1934, Klein's gaudy numbers dropped and never returned even after he himself was returned to the Phillies, and the Baker Bowl, not long after the start of the 1936 season. Klein won the hitting Triple Crown in 1933 with a .368 batting average, 28 home runs, and 120 runs batted in. In the Baker Bowl, Klein hit .467 with 20 homers and 81 RBI; on the road, he hit .280 with 8 homers and 39 RBI. Today, we would liken that to the "Coors Effect" that seems to be dogging Larry Walker's Hall chances.

Baseball lore has long maintained that had Ted Williams, a famous left-handed pull-hitter—he was one of the first batters to have a defensive shift employed regularly against him—played his home games in New York's Yankee Stadium with its celebrated "short porch" in right field instead of Boston's Fenway Park with its longer distance to the right field wall (albeit shortened with the addition of the bullpen before the wall when Williams had joined the Red Sox), he would have hit 600 or more home runs, instead of his 521 career homers, despite losing five prime years to military service. Similarly, had Joe DiMaggio been in Boston and peppering the left-field "Green Monster," his career totals might have been different. Leaving aside talent dispersion and allegations of early steroids use, would Babe Ruth had hit 60 home runs in a season, or 714 in his career, without that "short porch" in Yankee Stadium—nicknamed "the House That Ruth Built"—for a significant stretch of his career?

With all these factors now on the table, let's just try to put this all into perspective using one example of the "sanctity" of baseball records.

The Myth of the Pristine Past

In 1927, Babe Ruth sets the single-season record for home runs by clouting 60 of them. This is during a time of talent dispersion, when only white men were allowed to play major-league baseball, and only seven years after baseball decreed that a clean, unmarked baseball should always be in play—the birth of the Live-ball Era—after decades in which players did everything they could to deform and deface the ball to make it harder to hit and harder to catch. Ruth himself might have tried to gain an edge by using performance-enhancing substances such as an extract from sheep's testicles, and he certainly used alcohol, which had been made illegal by an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States seven years previously. We could cite the "short porch" of Yankee Stadium as well even though Ruth hit 28 of his homers at home, in 73 games and 253 at-bats, and 32 on the road, in 78 games and 287 at-bats.

Although both Jimmie Foxx, hitting 58 home runs in 1932, and Hank Greenberg, hitting 58 home runs in 1938, both came close to Ruth's record, it wasn't until 1961 that Ruth's record faced another credible threat.

That threat was from two Yankees, outfielders Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, playing in an expansion year: The AL grew by two teams, with the old Washington Senators franchise moving to Minnesota to become the Twins while a new Washington Senators franchise debuted (it would soon relocate to the Dallas area to become the Texas Rangers), and the Los Angeles Angels also debuted. In addition to the dilution of talent as players were required to fill two new rosters, the schedule also expanded to 162 games from the previous 154 games. Add to this an environment in which "greenies"—amphetamines—appear to be widely used, and the allegations that Mantle might have been juicing.

Maris eventually broke Ruth's record, and although then-Commissioner Ford Frick decreed that Maris's record was for a 162-game schedule and Ruth's record was for a 154-game schedule, there was never any official qualification for Maris's record. Never mind that Maris actually had just seven more plate appearances than did Ruth, and never mind that Maris was playing in the integrated era while Ruth was playing in the segregated era. (Although Maris famously hit the record-breaking 61st home run in Yankee Stadium, on the last day of the season, Maris's home-road splits were a wash: He hit 30 homers at Yankee Stadium in 79 games and 280 at-bats, and 31 homers on the road in 82 games and 310 at-bats.) Nevertheless, Maris's challenge was considered to be challenge to the "validity" of an established record.

Then comes 1998, and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa—a Dominican indicating the widespread presence and influence of Latin players barely hinted at during Maris's time and non-existent during Ruth's—help to "save baseball" with their pursuit of Maris's record. Both play in an era of talent compression, when the aggregate skill level is higher than it had ever been before not just through the widest talent pool baseball has ever known but through training, conditioning, nutrition, education, and scouting leagues above Maris's era, let alone Ruth's. McGwire and Sosa also face a pitching philosophy unheard-of in Maris's day, let alone Ruth's, as a parade of fresh-armed relievers stand ready to replace a starting pitcher who has far less chance of completing a game than did his counterparts in decades past. And we haven't even touched on the overpowering financial pressures of fighting to keep a lucrative job as a major-league baseball player, let alone living up to contractual expectations.

In order to gain an edge on the competition, McGwire and Sosa both use substances that while technically illegal are not yet being tested for. It is cheating, yes, but it is part of a tradition that is as old as baseball itself. Moreover, they are playing in an era of baseball unimaginable to players in bygone eras, whether it is playing against players with a different skin color or the fact that players no longer have to work an off-season job to support themselves and their families, which was a widespread reality in Major League Baseball until the 1970s.

The Mitchell Report worried about the "validity of baseball records," but no record at any time was ever created in a pristine environment. The game is always changing, perhaps subtly, perhaps drastically, but to condemn the current PEDs transgressions as "a serious threat to the integrity of the game" is to ignore the game's relative integrity—or lack thereof—at any time during its existence. Sixty home runs in 1927 is relative to the conditions of the game in 1927 and means something different in 1961 and again in 1998. What unites them all is that they are part of a continuum of baseball that, to be optimistic, improves as it matures, albeit in fits and starts, false or otherwise.

But at any time, the best you can do is to evaluate the baseball you have, not the baseball you wish you had. The Steroids Era is a part of baseball history as much as segregation was, and as much as amphetamines usage was. We can argue about institutional factors and personal choices, but it will not change the records of players past and presently on the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot.

End the Witch-hunt

In 1692, an epidemic of mass hysteria in Colonial Massachusetts resulted in the Salem Witch Trials, at which a number of persons were accused of witchcraft. More than 300 years ago, belief in the supernatural was a much more immediate and palpable phenomenon than it is today, and although no evidence of supernatural events emerged, twenty persons were executed for witchcraft. (Despite the popular perception that witches were "burned at the stake," in Salem nineteen victims were hanged and one was crushed to death by stones heaped upon his chest.)

Even in more enlightened times, that witch-hunt mentality has taken hold again in the United States. As anti-Communism became a growing obsession in the 1950s, the federal government investigated allegations of Communist subversion and infiltration, uncovering some Communists but tarring many more non-Communists, or even non-fellow travelers, with the brush of Communism, often through allegation, innuendo, and guilt by association. The most famous example of this are the investigations by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, who accused the State Department and the military of harboring Communists until his credibility was shattered by his ultimately baseless yet damaging accusations.

However, more pervasive and more disruptive were the investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which compelled many persons from various walks of life to testify before the Committee regarding accusations of Communism either personally or through association. The industry most affected by HUAC's investigations was the movie industry as many performers, writers, producers, composers, and others in the industry were "blacklisted," or tacitly excluded from working consideration, regardless of whether they had any Communist connections. Reputations and even lives were destroyed as a "moral panic" developed into a witch-hunt hysteria. (Other recent witch-hunt examples in American history include the spate of "Satanic activity" in preschools in the 1980s.)

With respect to performance-enhancing drugs, Major League Baseball has been in a witch-hunt for a decade. The sport is in a "moral panic," desperate to purge itself of acts and individuals that it believes have sullied the reputation of the sport. In one sense, this is a good approach because it has forced a more comprehensive regimen for testing of PEDs as well as, by 2005, clearly defined penalties for failing a drug test that include a permanent ban from baseball for a third failed test. But in the years leading up to 2005, there was not such a policy, with enough individual and institutional blame to go around. However, the witch-hunt mentality is trying to retroactively apply sanctions when none had existed, or were not properly enforced, previously.

Gambling had existed in baseball before the 1919 World Series scandal, but it took that event to codify the rules regarding gambling in baseball, with consequences for all subsequent offenders, to which Pete Rose can attest. As we have seen, cheating in its various forms, including taking substances to enhance performance, has a long tradition in baseball. To carry the witch-hunt mentality for cheating to its logical (if still irrational) extreme, baseball must begin to purge itself of all cheaters currently enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

Instead, it is time to end the witch hunt. Every one of the 37 players on the 2013 ballot is eligible for Hall of Fame induction. Next comes the task of determining which ones are most qualified, to which we turn in Part 2.