The Baseball Hall of Fame announced its inductees this past week with very few surprises. Billy Wagner, C.C. Sabathia, and Ichiro Suzuki all got the required number of votes to be enshrined into Cooperstown, but the big story, as always, is those who didn’t get their names called to be a part of baseball’s group of forever. Is the “Morality Clause” the reason those guys didn’t get the call this time around once again?
All three players are Hall-of-Famers, but nobody who has ever watched a Major League baseball game in their lives will ever be able to say with a straight face that Billy Wagner is a better baseball player than Alex Rodriguez, another person who was on the ballot this year, or, better yet, Barry Bonds, who is no longer eligible to be on the ballot.
Yes, both players above have links to the PED era of baseball, but both players were leaps and bounds better than Wagner and other recent Hall of Famers such as Joe Mauer and Scott Rolen.
Why Writers?
It’s widely understood that PED users are always going to be shunned by the writers who vote for the players linked to using performance-enhancing drugs, and, to a point, justifiably so. But baseball was “saved” by the likes of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998.
MLB had the “Chicks Dig the Longball” campaign around the same time, and nobody blinked an eye. So why now? So why have all of these larger-than-life players (literally and figuratively) been shunned all these years later? There were a lot of players (not all) doing “The Juice” back then that slipped through the proverbial cracks. Some may have even found their way through the doors at Cooperstown. Why has baseball given the writers who vote on this “Carte-Blanche” to who gets into the Hall? Bonds was a Hall-of-Famer when he left Pittsburgh, long before his physical stature got to where it was with the San Francisco Giants.
The same can be said for Alex Rodriguez. Arguably one of the most talented players to ever play the game. His biggest fault was his fragile ego. He saw that others were doing some nefarious things behind closed doors and that those people were getting an advantage he didn’t have and could take part to keep the edge. He still had to hit the baseball. And he did it better than most. It’s the same with Bonds. Round ball, round bat. You have to hit it square. And those two did it better than most.
Will the “Morality Clause” ever end?
So where does this “morality clause” end when it comes to The Baseball Hall-of-Fame? Curt Schilling found out the hard way that it never does. Schilling is a part of baseball history. The bloody sock, the Red Sox finally winning a World Series, his championship with the Arizona Diamondbacks over the New York Yankees, and his stats alone should be enough to get him into the Hall-of-Fame, but if it were only that easy. Schillings has had a much less than exemplary life since leaving baseball, keeping him out of the hallowed halls. But should it? No. If it does, shouldn’t it also be the same clause that takes people out of the Hall-of-Fame?
Roberto Alomar is one of, if not the greatest, second baseman to ever play the game. He was kept out of Cooperstown for one year after his spitting incident with umpire John Hirschbeck, but he got in during his second year of eligibility. Alomar was granted a pass after that, but what is still puzzling is that he is in the Hall now. The Toronto Blue Jays have exiled him for some sexual assault allegations. He has been removed from their “Ring of Honor,” and his likeness has been removed from anything associated with the team. So you tell me, should Alomar be in the Hall of Fame? Which is worse. A player going for a competitive advantage or a player with sexual assault allegations and cover-ups?
Conclusion
Where is the moral high ground now, baseball writers? It seems a little odd. Baseball needs to find a way to get in front of this somehow, but something tells me, as always, when it comes to baseball, that they won’t.
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