ALL SPORTS measure performance by players’ statistics, and no sport is as number driven as professional baseball. Players who hit lots of home runs, pitchers who win lots of games, record-setters who achieve phenomenal successes, these guys usually end up in baseball’s hallowed Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. But now there’s a glitch. In the just-released results of the voting for the Hall, done by registered baseball writers, not a single player on the ballot was voted in. That included Barry Bonds (the home run king) and Roger Clemens (one of the most dominant pitchers ever). And why not? The answer is spelled PEDs: performance enhancing drugs.
Baseball watchers are split on whether or not PEDs should have anything to do with entry into the Hall. Some say they should have nothing to do with a player’s entry, that only his statistics should matter. Others believe that use of PEDs should disqualify a player from eligibility, notwithstanding his numbers. I agree with the latter position.
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) does the official selecting and it is a subjective process. The only specific provision in the Hall of Fame election rules is the controversial Rule 5: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.” This is sometimes referred to as “the character clause.”
Professional ballplayers are often revered as heroes; Hall of Fame ballplayers are certainly the kind that youngsters would look up to as heroes. Since when does character not matter when it comes to filling such an exalted position as HERO? Barry Bonds character is not difficult to disparage, for example. The guy treated everyone, even those closest to him, with utter disdain. Even his own teammates were reported not to like him.
But neither Bonds nor Clemens were ever convicted of using PEDs, some say. Bonds was convicted of lying; Clemens acquitted of lying. While our criminal justice system depends for its legitimacy upon the legal fiction of “innocent until proven guilty,” the baseball writers are certainly not bound to follow that contrivance, nor is anyone not sworn as a juror. Permit me the opportunity, as a lifelong participant in the criminal justice system, to advise you that jury acquittal does not equate with innocence. It means simply that that particular jury panel found the evidence presented in that courtroom to be insufficient to convince them beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. Their findings are often second-guessed by others not ordered by the judge to focus only upon what evidence was presented (including those judges who have suppressed evidence of a confession or other incriminating fact). Are jurors ever wrong? Too often to recount. To this day, an overwhelming percentage of Americans believe that OJ Simpson killed his wife and her friend, despite his acquittal. And can you say CASEY ANTHONY?
But back to baseball. There is not a single element of the six-pronged Rule 5 that is not negatively impacted by the use of PEDs. There is plenty of evidence against both Bonds and Clemens, just like there is evidence against cycling former hero Lance Armstrong. There may not have been a trial on the charge, but we are all free to make our own determinations based upon the facts revealed extra-judicially. Pete Rose, one of the game’s greatest hitters, was banned for life based upon evidence gathered by the commissioner that he participated in gambling on his own team. I would not want my children to grow up thinking that it was okay to succeed by cheating with drugs or that consorting with gamblers was okay.
We live in an ambivalent, permissive society. There are gambling laws in most states that prohibit betting on professional sports, yet newspapers publish the gambling odds every week for the benefit of anyone inclined to partake. As for drugs, I have at least a half dozen pill bottles on my breakfast table that I take to enhance my daily performance. But I’m not competing in a professional arena against non-pilltakers, and audiences aren’t paying big bucks to see how well my renal system performs.