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Friday, December 8, 2006
McGwire gets in on my Hall of Fame ballot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
I voted for Mark McGwire because he was the greatest pure power hitter in the history of baseball, and I’m aware the word “pure” bears a loaded connotation. You’re asking: Was there anything “pure” about anything McGwire did on the baseball field?
I voted for McGwire because I don’t know that there wasn’t. I might suspect, sure. But is suspicion enough to keep a man out of the Hall of Fame? In a nation where the law carries the presumption of innocence, should the national pastime carry the presumption of guilt?
I voted for McGwire because I don’t hold his stammering “I’m-not-here-to-talk-about-the-past” appearance before the congressional committee against him because I considered the whole thing a sham. (And also because I note with amusement that the most impassioned testimony came from the finger-wagging Rafael Palmeiro, who later tested positive. So much for forthrightness.)
I voted for McGwire because I’m uncomfortable doing what baseball should have done when balls started flying over yonder fences at an unprecedented rate. Did blundering Bud Selig say, “I smell a rat — let’s test for performance-enhancing drugs ASAP”? No, baseball did as baseball does: It banked the money from bumped-up ticket sales and toasted the Bashball Binge as the newest golden era of the grand old game. The sport turned its head, and now it expects humble voters — the AJC doesn’t allow writers to vote in weekly polls or on yearly awards but permits columnists to cast a Hall of Fame ballot — to sit as ex post facto judge and jury?
I voted for McGwire because his numbers are cut from Cooperstown cloth — 583 home runs, the seventh-most ever, and four seasons of 50-plus homers, tied for the most ever — and because, in a sport clothed in murk, numbers offer the only clarity. And let’s say for argument’s sake that McGwire did use steroids later in his career: He hit 49 home runs as a rawboned rookie in 1987, which means he was pretty strong already. So how many of the 583 were tainted, and how many weren’t? Enough to downsize Big Mac into just another Dave Kingman?
I voted for McGwire because baseball didn’t bother to test for steroids until 2002, and he played his last game in 2001. And yes, I realize steroids were (and are) illegal without a prescription, but andro, which McGwire admitted using in 1998, was available over the counter. If ingesting andro was his greatest sin, is that enough to bar him from the hallowed Hall? If so, then how do we explain the ongoing enshrinement of Gaylord Perry, who threw what he has admitted was an illegal-by-baseball-bylaws spitter? Is morality different for pitchers than for hitters?
I voted for McGwire because I’m tired of the come-lately moralizing. This week’s Sports Illustrated includes an anti-McGwire sermonette; exactly eight years ago, the same magazine dressed McGwire and Sammy Sosa in togas and laurel wreaths and proclaimed them its Sportsmen of the Year. The homers hit in 1998 are still recognized as legitimate by MLB and will surely never be invalidated; if deeds are allowed to stand, can we devalue the doers?
I voted for McGwire, and I expect I’ll be in the distinct minority. (A player must be named on 75 percent of the ballots to earn enshrinement; last year 520 votes were cast.) I’m fully aware that baseball is caught up in a wave of “reform,” but unless/until somebody proves that McGwire cheated to the extent cheating made him an exponentially better hitter, I’ll vote for him. The same with Sammy Sosa. The same with Barry Bonds.
I voted for McGwire because I’m not God and I’m not Sherlock Holmes. For too long baseball didn’t want to know the provenance of its power surge, and the inevitable consequence is that too much is now unknowable. I don’t know for certain what McGwire did or didn’t do off the field. I only know what he did on it.
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