I’m somewhat surprised to see this happening after Bud Selig’s election to the Hall of Fame:
With Selig’s induction, Hall of Fame voters are changing their stance on suspected cheaters. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle announced she’ll now vote for players who she believe cheated, since Selig is now in the HOF.
Senseless to keep steroid guys out when the enablers are in Hall of Fame. I now will hold my nose and vote for players I believe cheated.
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) December 4, 2016
And she’s not the only one.
The stance might seem bizarre, but it’s a perfectly reasonable response to Selig getting in. Selig didn’t do nearly enough to prevent or stop baseball’s steroid era. He was a willing enabler and because of that, the league’s reputation suffered greatly. If his actions are deemed good enough to get into the Hall of Fame, than those he enabled belong too. It’s logically sound reasoning.
I don’t buy it. Selig, despite being commissioner, had little power to prosecute players for drug use during the steroid era. The union’s position during that time was that drug testing was off table, for many good reasons. It was an unreasonable search. It was an invasion of privacy. MLB could go after players with cause, but then teams would need to do the distasteful act of spying on their players.
Frankly, over time, I’ve come to believe this issue belonged in the MLBPA. The owners were not hurt by steroid use. The fans were not hurt by steroid use, except for the few who believe in some mythical golden age of purity. The people hurt were the players not taking PEDs. This wasn’t and isn’t a management versus players issue, but a player versus player issue, and it should be handled by the union.
Selig was not passing out needles. A group of ultra-competitive athletes acted like ultra-competitive athletes and rekindled interest in their sport. The players knew what was going on. They could have gone to the union and said, “We want drug testing. We want this to stop,”, and the union could have done this internally. The steroid era was a failure of the players, not of management.
You sre so wrong Dave. MLB was giving presentations to owners/GM in the annual meetings on the benefits of steroid use. Teams were educating players about the proper use of steroids. MLB never made an issue of testing in the CBA negotiations. It was only when Congress got involved over Balco that MLB and MLBPA got religion.
Tom Verducci covers a lot of this in his Torre book “the Yankee Years”
Ptodd » Thanks, I had not heard that before. I mostly remember the union objecting to testing.
Ptodd » So I found this:
Your comment made it sound like MLB was doing this on a yearly basis, where this sounds like they did it once. By 1998, the horse was pretty much out of the barn.
I’m probably ok with Scheuerholz (sp?) & Selig.
Selig wasn’t unanimous–he only got 15 not 16 votes.
So–the rest of the eligibles. Lou Piniella got 7 votes. He probably qualifies best as a Manager–he won the world title with the Reds in 1990, managed >20 years, won multiple division titles, won multiple pennants, and won those 116 games with the Mariners in 2001, which is an alltime record.
Now to me, regardless of his overall won loss record, that’s HOF stuff.
If you throw in his 20+ years as a player, that he was ROY and a star on multiple playoff teams, ALONG with his being a great manager, i think you have to conclude that 45 years in the game at a high level qualifies him for the HOF.
Now we come to Will the Thrill Clark, who is 25th in JAWS among first basemen. I think he’s on the bubble, but he should be voted in.
Finally, George Steinbrenner. He should be voted into the HOF.
I recognized reasonable minds might differ, but in an era when Donald Trump is President, how can you keep George Steinbrenner out of the HOF?
Steinbrenner was Trump before Trump was Trump.
The modern NY Yanks would not exist but for Steinbrenner.
He belongs in.
It’s kind of an outrage that Steinbrenner is not in the HOF.
Like Atlanta is some great franchise.
art kyriazis, philly