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The Mark McGwire Debate: 2015



This is the fourteenth of our series where we here at Notinhalloffame.com, do what else?  Debate the merit of twenty-four men on the most loaded Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in our lifetime.

Joining me, the site's Committee Chairman, in this debate are D.K. of the site's Phillies Archivist blog and Darryl Tahirali of the site's DDT's Pop Flies blog.  This looks to be a very important part of our site, and we hope you will enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Chairman:  What, the PED discussion again?  Actually, I am going to open with something a little different, as I have been a little surprised at just how much as his support has plummeted.  This was the first “Steroids Guy” on the Ballot and here we are on year nine and the new ten year rule will kick him off in two years; and don’t think this isn’t by accident.  Mark McGwire plummeted to eleven percent last year, but his fall shows me that contrition doesn’t mean anything to the writers.  Nobody else apologized, and Big Mac has done pretty well for himself as a hitting coach in the Majors.  So much for forgiveness.

Darryl:  You and I differ on the intent of reducing the eligibility period. I think it is to reduce the logjam regardless of the perception of the player—Edgar Martinez, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell are just as likely to fall off as the PEDs-suspected players. Mark McGwire was indeed the lightning rod, though, the first star with that PEDs association to hit the ballot. Regardless of what doping did to his performance, that performance is on the bubble—more peak dominance than longevity.

He was largely one-dimensional, a Three True Outcomes hitter—walk, strikeout, home run—but it was an awesome dimension.  One thing that impresses me is that his on-base percentage of .394 is 131 points higher than his .263 batting average.  He collected 1626 hits but walked 1317 times, and only 150 of those were intentional—but that's still 46th all-time.  That's a feared hitter—and a selective one. Borderline, but he's like a Ralph Kiner: Essentially one tool, but it was a sledgehammer. Just barely a Hall of Famer—but I think at this point, a future Expansion Era Committee will have to debate that. And that is the ramification of the shortened eligibility period: Baseball is dumping responsibility for gatekeeping into the Hall on future committees.

D.K.:  I think that a lot of the media that covered McGwire’s quest to surpass the single season total of Roger Maris back in 1998 felt like they’d been duped when it came out that McGwire wasn’t clean.  These same writers are the ones who have withheld their vote for McGwire ever since he became eligible.  Therefore I think McGwire’s chances for election are minimal.

Chairman:  I stand by my conspiracy theories!  We did not walk on the moon, there was another gunman and aliens built the pyramids in Egypt.  Ok, bad jokes aside, we’ll agree to disagree on the motives, but you are right about equating McGwire to a one trick pony, though it was one equivalent in my eyes to Thornton Melon’s triple lindy (1% of future shares in the site to whoever gets that reference), but yes, taking away from PEDs it is a resume that puts you on the cusp of the Hall when looking at the bigger picture. 

Saying that these future committees are going to be loaded with his generation’s “clean players”, so if McGwire and his friends are getting in, they have a better chance with the baseball writers, not with guys like Frank Thomas or Goose Gossage who have openly decried these guys shouldn’t be in, and could wind up on these future committees. 

D.K.:  The odd thing about Barry Bonds and McGwire is that they began using PEDs after they were already highly successful star players. Many have argued that if Bonds had left steroids alone he’d have made the Hall Of Fame anyway.  McGwire wouldn’t have put up Hall Of Fame numbers, but he would probably have hit 400+ clean home runs and had a very good career. He reached the majors with a bang, smashing 49 home runs in his first full season of 1987 and topped 50 homers a few seasons later when he was still likely clean. He probably wouldn’t have made the HOF because he was only a .263 lifetime hitter and he struck out far too much.

Was it the Deadly Sin of pride that prompted Bonds and McGwire to chase records and increase their legacies that in the end became their downfalls.

Darryl: Chairman, you may be right that McGwire's best chance is with the writers and not a future veterans committee--that is an excellent point. The recent Hall of Famers will staff those future committees, and they are likely to keep their current perspectives. So, McGwire may in fact be his generation's Deacon White, not necessarily in terms of conduct, but that his great-grandkid may deliver the induction speech near the end of this century.

As for Thornton Melon, well . . . he just don't get no respect, does he?

Much like McGwire.

And as for a second shooter, don't get me started on the JFK assassination. The most plausible explanation to me would probably gobsmack a lot of people, but then I'd tell them to read David Lifton's "Best Evidence." (Hint: The "best evidence" is the body itself and what may have happened to it between Dallas and Bethesda, where the autopsy took place.)

Chairman:  DDT, we have to sit down over beer one day and solve the problems of the world, and based on an earlier comment I owe you a small portion of the site.  Personally, I do believe is a Hall of Famer, and I would have voted him in other years, but the glut of additional talent pushes him off if my ballot.  I vote no.

Darryl:  Chairman, I'll gladly take you up on that offer.

It's not so much the glut of additional talent--this year's ballot isn't any heavier than it has been in the past couple of years--but by now it is patently obvious even to me that anyone with tangible evidence or admission of PEDs usage is wearing a scarlet letter of "C" for Cheater and is not going to get 75 percent. So, this year my voting approach is primarily (although not exclusively) for those "clean" candidates who are with little dispute Hall of Famers. And with only 10 votes that means a mean triage.

So, no to Mark McGwire. Not this year.

D.K.:  I’ve never been one to forgive and forget easily when I’ve been wronged.

(I still have a fist and a set of brass knuckles ready for an older bully who once sucker punched me when I was 13). 

That said, when America watched the race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to topple Roger Maris’ season’s home run record of 61 homers in 1998 collectively we thought we were watching the greatest thing since Maris and Mickey Mantle were racing to beat Babe Ruth’s record of 60 HR nearly four decades earlier. The country thought it was watching history in the making; as it turned out we were only watching two frauds making fools out of the nation’s sports fans.  The answer is a NO vote to McGwire this year and it might always be so.


Last modified on Thursday, 19 March 2015 18:48
Committee Chairman

Kirk Buchner, "The Committee Chairman", is the owner and operator of the site.  Kirk can be contacted at [email protected] .

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