The Pastime

“You get to the Hall of Fame mainly through the voting of baseball writers. I just hope that the writers judge the players on what they did on the field.”
–Donald Fehr

It’s easy to dislike Donald Fehr. Many people still place the majority of the blame on him for the infamous 1994 strike. He’s the head of the players’ union, so of course he’s biased. He’s only seen when he’s arguing on behalf of players, and when collective bargaining rears its ugly head, overshadowing what’s happening on the field.

Nonetheless, after reading Fehr’s comments about Mark McGwire and Hall of Fame voting, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said, and what it meant.

Why should people vote in, or more to the point, not vote in a player? Is it fair to consider aspects of that player outside of what they did on the field?

That’s the question that every writer with a Hall of Fame vote (and many without) is asking themselves. I, of course, have no vote, but I do have an opinion and a theory about the matter.

But before I can just come out and pass my judgement on the matter, I think we need to examine the issue from the beginning. That is to say; just what is the Hall of Fame?

From Wikipedia, here’s the short version of how the Hall was founded:

The Hall of Fame was dedicated on June 12, 1939 by Stephen Carlton Clark, grandson of Edward Clark, who was a founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Stephen C. Clark was owner of a local hotel and sought to bring tourists to Cooperstown, which had been damaged by the Great Depression, which significantly reduced the local tourist trade, and by Prohibition, which had devastated the local hops industry. A legend that U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown was instrumental in the early marketing of the Hall, though the truth of the Doubleday story is doubted by some. Major League Baseball, seeing the marketing opportunity, soon began cooperating with the Hall of Fame in promotion and the acquisition of artifacts for display.

So the Hall was created as a tourist trap. Sure, it’s evolved into a semi-sacred shrine of Baseball lore since then, but it’s important to know that it’s changed over time, and people’s ideas of what it meant to be enshrined have also changed.

The initial class was Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson. There is no doubt that they belong, and if we were to start over today, they would be included in a heartbeat.

Over the ensuing years, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) selected many more players, and the Veterans Committee added a few, to bring the total roster of Hall of Fame players to 225. Among them have been notorious racists, alcohol abusers, cheaters, murderers, criminals and other people who were as awful off the field as they were great on it. But the spectre of steroid use falls into a grey area.

The use of steroids (or any performance enhancing drug, PED) is reprehensible both morally and professionally. It overlaps the line between personal vice and professional ethics. To be as clear as possible, I believe that the use of any PED is simply wrong. It contaminates the game and affects the historical record.

But when there is no proof of PED use, and no precedence of excluding players based on suspicion or evidence of “cheating”, you have to fall back on the decades of precedence that are there.

The Hall of Fame selection criteria has little to do with “fame”. It’s the stats that get players enshrined. There are a few exceptions, but most of the “unworthy” players either were transcendent defenders in an era of poor defensive metrics, or were put in by a Veterans Committee that was at best shaky in its reliability, and at worst a glaring example of nepotism.

The single best method of deciding whether someone was worthy of being enshrined in a Hall of Fame must be by comparing them to their peers. If they were consistently in the top few percent of the league, certainly they must be worthy of induction, right? That’s the premise that many voters have used over the years, and it’s led to many worthy players joining the baseball pantheon of honor.

Achieving certain individual benchmarks can also lead to entry into Cooperstown, but it can also lead to dubious exclusion. Fred McGriff ended up a few home runs short of 500, and Bert Blyleven came up a couple wins shy of 300. If either had crossed those arbitrary lines, they would be almost assured of being in.

This all bring us to the debated players from the “Steroid Era”, roughly 1987 to 2003, as I would consider it to be.

For your consideration, here’s a list of the top 10 players who hit at least 400 home runs over that period, ranked in terms of OPS+ (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage compared as a ratio to the league average; 100 is average, 100+ is above average).

Name                OPS+  PLAYER OPS  LEAGUE OPS   HR

1  Barry Bonds      140      1.049      .750      642

2  Mark McGwire     131       .985      .751      580

3  Frank Thomas     131       .996      .762      418

4  Jeff Bagwell     126       .959      .761      419

5  Ken Griffey Jr.  124       .940      .758      481

6  Juan Gonzalez    119       .907      .762      429

7  Rafael Palmeiro  119       .896      .753      525

8  Fred McGriff     118       .889      .751      491

9  Sammy Sosa       118       .895      .761      539

10 Jose Canseco     116       .877      .753      424

That, ignoring the objections about PEDs, certainly looks like a list of three or four Hall of Fame locks, a few borderline members, and an also-ran or two.

Which brings me to my conclusion as to whether they should get in or not, now that I can consider the steroid rumors.

Here’s an important thing to consider, though. Steroid rumors now apply to not only to the top hitters in the league, but everyone, from Wally Joyner to Ken Caminiti to Barry Bonds. We can consider this entire era to be statistically tainted.

Just as we consider the Dead Ball Era to be, just as we consider the Pre-Integration Era to be, just as we consider the late 60’s pitching era to be. All were affected in one way or another.

It’s simply a relative effect on the overall stats that has to be corrected and adjusted for.

As much as I, and most everyone else, is against PEDs and celebrating those who abuse them, we have to reach a logical conclusion. The top few players from this era should be in the Hall.

It would be hypocritical and unfair to hand down judgements on this generation of players based on criteria that was categorically ignored in the past. Only betting on baseball would get you eliminated from consideration in the past seventy years of the Hall. It’s too late to start figuring in other factors now, especially when it’s impossible to determine conclusively just who was effected by those factors.

It won’t sully the Hall’s reputation to induct these men. The induction of dozens of less-than-savory folk in the past hasn’t. We all will know just what the Steroid Era inductees were suspected of, and can intelligently interpret their legacy knowing so. Ty Cobb stabbed a black man, choked a woman, and beat up a handicapped fan. If his Hall membership doesn’t smudge Cooperstown, then certainly Mark McGwire’s will not.

So I say this: induct those that were statistically worthy. But don’t forget the conditions under which everyone played during those years. After all, the Hall is all about remembering and preserving baseball’s rich past. It’s not our responsibility or right to change the criteria set down by our forefathers of baseball.