No, the Mitchell Report has not and will not "change baseball" (as so many have suggested). It's certainly given Hall of Fame voters something to think about, though. ESPN Radio's Mike Greenberg isn't a voter, but last week on his show he said what a lot of voters are thinking …
I think when all of the dust settles and you look back on the era in it's totality, you will have to come to the conclusion that an overwhelming number of players were using performance-enhancing drugs. … You either will have to put in absolutely no one; you will have to vote for no one who played between nineteen eighty-pick-a-year, 1985, 1988, whatever, it is, and … you could say, from 1988 through the time when they instituted the testing. But look, we all know, all of these guys, none of them tested positive, or very few of them. Roger Clemens name is in here: he didn't test positive. These guys know how to beat the testing, the smart ones. Barry Bonds never failed a drug test. So the point is, you will either have to put in absolutely no one in, or after several years have gone by, you will look back at the thing rationally and say, "Okay, there was a colossal problem -- not just in baseball but in all sports -- and the reality is, we still have to separate the very best players from the rest and put them in the Hall of Fame." Let's put it this way: at the very least, if it was me, I would do it that way, and I would put in Bonds and Clemens.
A number of Hall of Fame voters have weighed in lately, and this is not an uncommon sentiment: "We must vote for none of them, or all of them."
In baseball, if a batter's struck by a pitch but made no effort to get out of the way, the umpire's not supposed to give him first base. But you'll rarely see that call. Why? Because umpires don't like to use their judgment unless they absolutely have to.
Performance-enhancing drugs offer a chance for Hall of Fame voters to use their judgment, and some of them would rather not. Some of them would prefer to keep things simple, and vote only for hitters with 3,000 hits and pitchers with 300 wins.
Or for their friends. But good grief, shouldn't we expect more from those entrusted with the highest honor in professional sports?
My measure (at least for the moment) is this: If PEDs had never been invented, would this player have finished his career with Hall of Fame numbers? In the cases of
Barry Bonds and
Roger Clemens, I believe the answer is yes. In the case of
Mark McGwire, I believe the answer is no. Granted, most cases aren't nearly as easy as those. But if choosing Hall of Famers was supposed to be easy, they'd let all of us do it.
(tip of the cap to
BTF)
Rob Neyer
