Not Bonds.

Not Clemens.

Not Sosa.

Not Piazza.

Nobody elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and I am fine with it.

Thoughts?

Hell no, I'm not! Craig Biggio got absolutely SCREWED. So did Piazza, IMO. But Bonds, Sosa, Clemens and McGwire can go F themselves. Cheaters!

I am currently farting in the general direction of about 31.5% of the BBWA members.

so even non-steroid users were not elected? Why?

NDRU said:

so even non-steroid users were not elected? Why?

I believe voters were making a statement as many submitted a blank ballot.

And yes, I do agree Biggio deserved to get in. I'm sure he will next year, it probably wouldn't have been a good experience for him if he went in alone this year.

There has been a lot written about players who insist Piazza was using, even though there's been no concrete evidence against him such as a positive test or incriminating documents.

Nobody cares about this but the media.

Pokeno4Money said:

NDRU said:

so even non-steroid users were not elected? Why?

I believe voters were making a statement as many submitted a blank ballot.

And yes, I do agree Biggio deserved to get in. I'm sure he will next year, it probably wouldn't have been a good experience for him if he went in alone this year.

There has been a lot written about players who insist Piazza was using, even though there's been no concrete evidence against him such as a positive test or incriminating documents.

Much as I hate to say this, just take a look at Mike Piazza vs. Jeff Bagwell.

Piazza maintained pretty much the same body style his whole career. Bagwell blew up like Popeye. No one ever accused Bags of steroids publicly, but even an Astros homer like me has to be more than a little suspicious.

For awhile, Bagwell had forearms bigger than my thighs.

But Bidge? Nope. You'd be amazed at how small the guy is. Short, and just this side of skinny. And always has been, too.

They should have elected Pete Rose

On Piazza's alleged PED use ...

http://thesteroidera.blogspot.com/2009/03/mike-piazza-steroids-allegations.html

According to Jeff Pearlman’s new book about Roger Clemens, The Rocket That Fell To Earth, former MLB catcher and Clemens foe, Mike Piazza, used steroids and admitted it to at least one unnamed reporter. The book traces Clemens life from being born in Dayton, Ohio, to becoming a Major League superstar and prominent player in the steroid era.

The portions about Piazza have received the most press leading up to the book’s release, March 24. Deadspin first published excerpts about Piazza.

As the hundreds of major league ballplayers who turned to performance-enhancing drugs throughout the 1990s did their absolute best to keep the media at arm's length, Piazza took the opposite approach. According to several sources, when the subject of performance enhancing was broached with reporters he especially trusted, Piazza fessed up. "Sure, I use," he told one. "But in limited doses, and not all that often." (Piazza has denied using performance-enhancing drugs, but there has always been speculation.) Whether or not it was Piazza's intent, the tactic was brilliant: By letting the media know, of the record, Piazza made the information that much harder to report. Writers saw his bulging muscles, his acne-covered back. They certainly heard the under-the-breath comments from other major league players, some who considered Piazza's success to be 100 percent chemically delivered.

At least two former Major League players, one being Reggie Jefferson (another was not named), were quoted as saying they were sure that Piazza used steroids.

"He's a guy who did it, and everybody knows it," says Reggie Jefferson, the longtime major league first baseman. "It's amazing how all these names, like Roger Clemens, are brought up, yet Mike Piazza goes untouched."

"There was nothing more obvious than Mike on steroids," says another major league veteran who played against Piazza for years. "Everyone talked about it, everyone knew it. Guys on my team, guys on the Mets. A lot of us came up playing against Mike, so we knew what he looked like back in the day. Frankly, he sucked on the field. Just sucked. After his body changed, he was entirely different. 'Power from nowhere,' we called it."

When asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, to grade the odds that Piazza had used performance enhancers, the player doesn't pause.

"A 12," he says. "Maybe a 13."

The media chatter about Piazza’s supposed steroid use started weeks ago.

On February 26, The New York Posts’ Joel Sherman wrote about ...teroid use. Sherman noted that at the time, people were "talking about certain physical quirks that raised suspicion, notably a back full of acne."

On March 4, former New York Times reporter, Murray Chass, noting Sherman’s article, wrote on his blog that he was also suspicious of Piazza. Chass said that he had even written a story about Piazza’s back acne but the Times wouldn’t publish it.

When steroids became a daily subject in newspaper articles I wanted to write about Piazza’s acne-covered back. I was prepared to describe it in disgusting living color. But two or three times my editors at The New York Times would not allow it. Piazza, they said, had never been accused of using steroids so I couldn’t write about it.

Chass claims that Piazza’s back acne had cleared up by 2004, the first year that MLB had a drug testing program that could lead to a suspension.

I don’t know if Sherman noticed Piazza’s back after the 2003 season. But it was clear in 2004 and ‘05, his last two seasons with the Mets, and it was clear when I talked to him during the last week of the 2007.

The back acne implication is flimsy but it has become part of the story, and it’s not the first time.

In the Jason Grimsley Affidavit, Grimsley said that Glenallen Hill, who was also named by Kirk Radomski in the Mitchell Report, "was very obvious and had the worst back acne he’d ever seen."

NDRU said:

They should have elected Pete Rose

Everyone knew what was going on, I'm speaking of players, their union, and the owners. I've always said players who played in that block of time shouldn't be omitted. Oh, I'm sure I'll hear whining; that's not fair but HOF baseball stats are more important. If folks hadn't kept their mouths shut, spoken out, been proactive... baseball wouldn't have to deal with this shit. Oh, well.

RodeoSchro said:

Hell no, I'm not! Craig Biggio got absolutely SCREWED. So did Piazza, IMO. But Bonds, Sosa, Clemens and McGwire can go F themselves. Cheaters!

I am currently farting in the general direction of about 31.5% of the BBWA members.

Well, I'm going to play contrarian here and say that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens all deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

But wait! you say. Aren't they all guilty of taking steroids and other performance enhancing drugs? Though only Mark McGwire has somewhat admitted to being juiced up on steroids, evidence points to all of them having taken PED during their careers. So if what they did seriously compromise the game of baseball, why do they deserve to be in the Hall of Fame?

The reality is the game of baseball was compromised long before the whole steroid era. In fact, it was the ever escalating salaries in the wake of free agency and the lack of revenue sharing among teams that compromsied the game of baseball, which allowed wealthy team owners like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, Philadelpha Phillies, and Atlanta Braves to sign superstar players for huge long term contracts, and effectively poach great players from less wealthy teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins, Florida Marlins, the then-Montreal Expos, and Kansas City Royals. Who remembers the Pittsburgh Pirates teams of the early 1990's who went to the playoffs on the strength of players like Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, and Bobby Bonilla? Or when the then-Montreal Expos had players like Larry Walker and Pedro Martinez? Or when the Florida Marlins won the World Series in 1997 with the help of Edgar Renteria, Craig Counsell, and Livan Hernandez? The game was already heading down a slippery slope by the mid-1990s.

And then there was the devastating strike in 1994 which led to the cancellation of the remainder of the season, including the playoffs and World Series.

The strike left such a bad taste in the mouths of the general public that baseball may have permanently lost up to 10% of their fanbase just from that alone. And those who remained were not in the mood to coddle players they thought were grossly overpaid to begin with. A few fans came back during Cal Ripken's record-breaking consecutive games streak, but baseball was in a serious bind, as they were struggling to get fans into their ballparks. Even the networks weren't sure they wanted to carry baseball full-time, and the broadcast rights fees began to plateau, with CBS believing they overpaid for their last TV package and only NBC and a then-upstart young network named FOX being seriously interested in broadcasting baseball full time.

Meanwhile, performance enhancing drugs became an issue during the 1990s, particularly the Olympics, but it went down to all other sports as well. The IOC led the way in enforcement of drug policy, offering serious sanctions aginst those athletes who were found taking steroids and other perfornance enhancing drugs. The NFL soon followed suit with a strict drug policy, and the NBA and NHL also joined them. The International Cycling Federation joined in once they discovered a huge number of their athletes using performance enhancing drugs.

But what about baseball? They basically sat on their hands during the 1990s and pretended that the problem didn't exist.

It started becoming evident in 1997 when the first home run chase towards Roger Maris came to light. Back then Ken Griffey Jr. hit 56 home runs for the Seattle Mariners and Mark McGwire hit 58 home runs between gigs with the Oakland A's and St. Louis Cardinals. This obviously drew a lot of interest from fans and the media, and they reported on these developments daily. Suddenly people were talking positively about baseball again.

Nevertheless, there were clouds on the horizon. A local sports reporter had interviewed Mark McGwire during the season and had noticed that he had been taking nutritional supplements that would have banned him from the IOC, NFL, and NBA for at least a year, yet baseball had no such policy against performance enhancing drugs and would not have one until 2001 and would not be effectively enforced until 2005. This reporter first brought up the question of PED in 1997, but his superiors quashed the story because they didn't to bring any more negative publicity and frankly had a financial incentive to keep pushing the home run chase.

Then came 1998. Everybody remembers the huge home run battle between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa that not only broke but shattered the previous single season home run record by Roger Maris. ESPN was showing as many Cubs and Cardinals games as they possibly could under their contract, and when they couldn't air the games they would break into programming with each player's at-bat. They had a magical stroke of luck of airing the first game of the series between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals just as the two were on the verge of breaking Roger Maris' record, and after McGwire tied Maris' record, FOX even went out of their way to air a midweek Game of the Week in primetime to capture the record breaking moment. This frenzy contninued throughout the rest of the season, and it was helped immensely by the fact that both teams were in the playoff hunt at the same time.

What is forgotten about that season is that a huge number of players were hitting a record amount of home runs, and two other players would go on to hit at least 50 home runs (Ken Griffey Jr. - 58, Greg Vaughn - 50) and a handful of others hit at least 40 runs (Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Chipper Jones). Meanwhile, seats were rapidly filling baseball stadiums, baseball ratings went through the roof, and Nike even made commercials about the home run chase ("Chicks dig the long ball"). Those same sportswriters who condemn those same players today were actively cheerleading them at that time.

The success of McGwire and Sosa put some pressure on already huge stars like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez to step up their game. And with the huge money being paid out to them, they probably felt they needed to justify their huge salaries, and that probbaly led them to start juicing up. Meanwhile, more voices came out exposing the steroid scandal, with both Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti admitting to using steroids and pointing fingers at other players for using steroids as well. (BTW, Ken Caminiti would later be diagnosed with cancer, which he attributed to his excessive steroid use. He would ultimately die from the disease.)

Though people were still excited about Barry Bonds' single season home run chase in 2001, in which he would ultimately hit 73 home runs, people bgean to notice his odd appearance. Sure they noticed he had a much more massive frame, but his head appeared to be biugger that it had been before, and while he became a beast at the plate, the multi-Gold Glove winning outfielder became a serious liabilty on defense, as his knees suddenly gave out on him.

It wouldn't be until the next collective bargaining contract that baseball began to deal with the PED issue, and even then it would be a couple of years until they really enforced the regulations. Congress began to have hearings about the steroid issue, and while it caused quite a rancor on Capitol Hill and the media the fans basically wrote it off.

It would be revealed later that PED was not only rampant but a matter of policy in baseball from 1990 to 2005. Not only did it appear that half of the players were using PED, but it was encouraged by their coaches, owners, agents, and fans either explicitly or implicitly. And most of the sportswriters who are being sanctimonious now about PED are being hypocritical. In fact, all of us were enablers in this whole debacle. So why should be be so judgmental now?

I say these players deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, because it still takes an extraordinary amount of talent to put up the numbers they did, even if they were juiced up. If you don't want to put them in the first ballot or even second ballot, fine, but we would be just as stupid in not acknowledging their service as we were in not acknowledging the steroid issue in the first place.

Bonds and Clemens had HOF numbers before they juiced - they should definitely get in. Barry Bonds is probably the greatest player of our era. But dudes like Sosa & Palmiero, hell no! Their numbers pre-steroids weren' impressive.

Before fans get on their soapbox, remember there are cheaters already in the HOF like Gaylord Perry. He even admitted it.

728huey said:

RodeoSchro said:

Hell no, I'm not! Craig Biggio got absolutely SCREWED. So did Piazza, IMO. But Bonds, Sosa, Clemens and McGwire can go F themselves. Cheaters!

I am currently farting in the general direction of about 31.5% of the BBWA members.

Well, I'm going to play contrarian here and say that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens all deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

But wait! you say. Aren't they all guilty of taking steroids and other performance enhancing drugs? Though only Mark McGwire has somewhat admitted to being juiced up on steroids, evidence points to all of them having taken PED during their careers. So if what they did seriously compromise the game of baseball, why do they deserve to be in the Hall of Fame?

The reality is the game of baseball was compromised long before the whole steroid era. In fact, it was the ever escalating salaries in the wake of free agency and the lack of revenue sharing among teams that compromsied the game of baseball, which allowed wealthy team owners like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, Philadelpha Phillies, and Atlanta Braves to sign superstar players for huge long term contracts, and effectively poach great players from less wealthy teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins, Florida Marlins, the then-Montreal Expos, and Kansas City Royals. Who remembers the Pittsburgh Pirates teams of the early 1990's who went to the playoffs on the strength of players like Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, and Bobby Bonilla? Or when the then-Montreal Expos had players like Larry Walker and Pedro Martinez? Or when the Florida Marlins won the World Series in 1997 with the help of Edgar Renteria, Craig Counsell, and Livan Hernandez? The game was already heading down a slippery slope by the mid-1990s.

And then there was the devastating strike in 1994 which led to the cancellation of the remainder of the season, including the playoffs and World Series.

The strike left such a bad taste in the mouths of the general public that baseball may have permanently lost up to 10% of their fanbase just from that alone. And those who remained were not in the mood to coddle players they thought were grossly overpaid to begin with. A few fans came back during Cal Ripken's record-breaking consecutive games streak, but baseball was in a serious bind, as they were struggling to get fans into their ballparks. Even the networks weren't sure they wanted to carry baseball full-time, and the broadcast rights fees began to plateau, with CBS believing they overpaid for their last TV package and only NBC and a then-upstart young network named FOX being seriously interested in broadcasting baseball full time.

Meanwhile, performance enhancing drugs became an issue during the 1990s, particularly the Olympics, but it went down to all other sports as well. The IOC led the way in enforcement of drug policy, offering serious sanctions aginst those athletes who were found taking steroids and other perfornance enhancing drugs. The NFL soon followed suit with a strict drug policy, and the NBA and NHL also joined them. The International Cycling Federation joined in once they discovered a huge number of their athletes using performance enhancing drugs.

But what about baseball? They basically sat on their hands during the 1990s and pretended that the problem didn't exist.

It started becoming evident in 1997 when the first home run chase towards Roger Maris came to light. Back then Ken Griffey Jr. hit 56 home runs for the Seattle Mariners and Mark McGwire hit 58 home runs between gigs with the Oakland A's and St. Louis Cardinals. This obviously drew a lot of interest from fans and the media, and they reported on these developments daily. Suddenly people were talking positively about baseball again.

Nevertheless, there were clouds on the horizon. A local sports reporter had interviewed Mark McGwire during the season and had noticed that he had been taking nutritional supplements that would have banned him from the IOC, NFL, and NBA for at least a year, yet baseball had no such policy against performance enhancing drugs and would not have one until 2001 and would not be effectively enforced until 2005. This reporter first brought up the question of PED in 1997, but his superiors quashed the story because they didn't to bring any more negative publicity and frankly had a financial incentive to keep pushing the home run chase.

Then came 1998. Everybody remembers the huge home run battle between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa that not only broke but shattered the previous single season home run record by Roger Maris. ESPN was showing as many Cubs and Cardinals games as they possibly could under their contract, and when they couldn't air the games they would break into programming with each player's at-bat. They had a magical stroke of luck of airing the first game of the series between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals just as the two were on the verge of breaking Roger Maris' record, and after McGwire tied Maris' record, FOX even went out of their way to air a midweek Game of the Week in primetime to capture the record breaking moment. This frenzy contninued throughout the rest of the season, and it was helped immensely by the fact that both teams were in the playoff hunt at the same time.

What is forgotten about that season is that a huge number of players were hitting a record amount of home runs, and two other players would go on to hit at least 50 home runs (Ken Griffey Jr. - 58, Greg Vaughn - 50) and a handful of others hit at least 40 runs (Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Chipper Jones). Meanwhile, seats were rapidly filling baseball stadiums, baseball ratings went through the roof, and Nike even made commercials about the home run chase ("Chicks dig the long ball"). Those same sportswriters who condemn those same players today were actively cheerleading them at that time.

The success of McGwire and Sosa put some pressure on already huge stars like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez to step up their game. And with the huge money being paid out to them, they probably felt they needed to justify their huge salaries, and that probbaly led them to start juicing up. Meanwhile, more voices came out exposing the steroid scandal, with both Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti admitting to using steroids and pointing fingers at other players for using steroids as well. (BTW, Ken Caminiti would later be diagnosed with cancer, which he attributed to his excessive steroid use. He would ultimately die from the disease.)

Though people were still excited about Barry Bonds' single season home run chase in 2001, in which he would ultimately hit 73 home runs, people bgean to notice his odd appearance. Sure they noticed he had a much more massive frame, but his head appeared to be biugger that it had been before, and while he became a beast at the plate, the multi-Gold Glove winning outfielder became a serious liabilty on defense, as his knees suddenly gave out on him.

It wouldn't be until the next collective bargaining contract that baseball began to deal with the PED issue, and even then it would be a couple of years until they really enforced the regulations. Congress began to have hearings about the steroid issue, and while it caused quite a rancor on Capitol Hill and the media the fans basically wrote it off.

It would be revealed later that PED was not only rampant but a matter of policy in baseball from 1990 to 2005. Not only did it appear that half of the players were using PED, but it was encouraged by their coaches, owners, agents, and fans either explicitly or implicitly. And most of the sportswriters who are being sanctimonious now about PED are being hypocritical. In fact, all of us were enablers in this whole debacle. So why should be be so judgmental now?

I say these players deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, because it still takes an extraordinary amount of talent to put up the numbers they did, even if they were juiced up. If you don't want to put them in the first ballot or even second ballot, fine, but we would be just as stupid in not acknowledging their service as we were in not acknowledging the steroid issue in the first place.

Excellent, excellent, excellent post.

I have despised Barry Bonds since he was with the Pirates, but someone please explain to me how you can keep him out of the hall now when the majority of the same "voters" gave him what...seven MVP awards? I still remember 2004, when EVEYONE knew he was juicing, and he won the MVP award over my man Adrian Beltre...who damn near single-handedly carried my Dodgers to the NL West title. The Giants didnt even make the playoffs that year (eliminated on the second to the last day of the season with a 7-run 9th inning rally by my Dodgers...I was there!) and Bonds gets the MVP because everyone was scared to pitch to him.

The hypocrisy is just as ridiculous as the way Selig tries to make us believe he was clueless to what was going on.

StonedImmaculate said:

I have despised Barry Bonds since he was with the Pirates, but someone please explain to me how you can keep him out of the hall now when the majority of the same "voters" gave him what...seven MVP awards? I still remember 2004, when EVEYONE knew he was juicing, and he won the MVP award over my man Adrian Beltre...who damn near single-handedly carried my Dodgers to the NL West title. The Giants didnt even make the playoffs that year (eliminated on the second to the last day of the season with a 7-run 9th inning rally by my Dodgers...I was there!) and Bonds gets the MVP because everyone was scared to pitch to him.

The hypocrisy is just as ridiculous as the way Selig tries to make us believe he was clueless to what was going on.

MVP voting is based purely on performance whereas HOF voting is also based on the player's "integrity, sportsmanship and character".

^ Yeah, but that's a lie. The baseball HOF is filled with all kinds of shady characters - whoremongerers, drunkards and plenty of racists.

uPtoWnNY said:

^ Yeah, but that's a lie. The baseball HOF is filled with all kinds of shady characters - whoremongerers, drunkards and plenty of racists.

Sure is, notably Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth to name just a couple. Unfortunately the HOF cares only about what happens on the field and anything that would have an impact on game results. As long as you don't break the rules by juicing, betting on games (Rose) or throwing games (Shoeless Joe) then you're eligible.

IMO, the HOF should only be about performance on the field, court, gridiron or ice. If you went solely by character, you wouldn't have a HOF (in any sport).

uPtoWnNY said:

^ Yeah, but that's a lie. The baseball HOF is filled with all kinds of shady characters - whoremongerers, drunkards and plenty of racists.

I agree, but cheating is another thing. That directly relates to your performance

Anyway, Bonds and the others are not ineligible, they just didn't get the necessary votes. But even McGuire got votes, and he admitted using.

Pokeno4Money said:

uPtoWnNY said:

^ Yeah, but that's a lie. The baseball HOF is filled with all kinds of shady characters - whoremongerers, drunkards and plenty of racists.

Sure is, notably Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth to name just a couple. Unfortunately the HOF cares only about what happens on the field and anything that would have an impact on game results. As long as you don't break the rules by juicing, betting on games (Rose) or throwing games (Shoeless Joe) then you're eligible.

Don Drysdale is in the hall and everyone knew full well he was slicking up his hand with the "juice" he had in his hair, throwing that spitball. There are plenty others too.

I personally feel there should be a wing at the hall (or at least a very large display) showcasing all of the different ways that players have cheated over the years. All those players (who are still great, regardless of if they cheated) who are known to have been doing something crooked should be displayed there. Of course that would never happen, but to try and act like the game is "oh so pure" with only a couple of bad apples insults our intelligence. The shit has been dirty from day one...or at least since they realized they could make money off of the sport.