Many current Baseball Hall of Fame inductees have been vocal about their opinions about not letting suspected PED users (namely Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds & Sammy Sosa) into Cooperstown. Andre Dawson had commented weeks ago that those players should not be inducted. Jim Bunning recently spoke out and said he would not be comfortable visiting the Hall anymore that they been elected. Slugger, Al Kaline echoed the same sentiment, that he was “honoured to be in the Hall” and he would not feel comfortable “listening to some of these new guys talk about how great they were’. On Twitter, Dennis Eckersley tweeted how the Baseball Writers made a statement and that it “feels right.”
Perhaps nobody has been as blunt as Rich “Goose” Gossage, who entered the Hall of Fame for his work as a Relief Pitcher. The Goose bluntly said that the “steroids guys under suspicion received too many votes” and that they “cheated” and should not be rewarded at all.
Can we assume that many other living Baseball Hall of Fame inductees feel the same way? Probably, we can. Taking PED users (or suspected ones) out of the equation, rarely do Hall of Famers seem happy about others entering the exclusive club. The Veteran’s Committee (comprised of Hall of Fame Players) rarely seem to induct anybody, and when they do it is after they have passed on (see Ron Santo). Okay, that may be a generalization, but doesn’t a club seem more exclusive with less members?
Whether those latter points are right are not, we know one thing for sure: That the Baseball Hall of Fame has taken no stance on whether those associated with Performance Enhancing Drugs should be in Cooperstown. In fact, they have said absolutely nothing on the topic. It is not that the Hall has not taken stances before. When Major League Baseball banned Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson for gambling on the sport, the Hall of Fame removed them from the ballot. Should any Baseball Writer simply write their names in (Rose did have in write in ballots) they would be (and were) discounted. However, we don’t blame the Baseball Hall for their inaction; they simply followed the lead of Bud Selig.
Currently,
Curt Schilling recently said “everyone was guilty” and that players either “used PEDs, or did nothing to stop their use”. He continued to say that the “generation got rich” and “there was a price to pay”. If everyone is in fact guilty this includes Bud Selig and the rest of Major League Baseball.
Off the soapbox now.
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