No Baseball Hall of Fame for Bonds, Clemens or Sosa ! -The iPINIONS Journal

January 9 looms as a day of reckoning for Baseball (i.e., a referendum on steroids in Baseball). Candidates must be retired for at least five years and need 75 percent of the votes to be inducted. More to the point, members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BWAA) will either vote based solely on these players’ Hall-of-Fame-worthy stats, or they will factor prevailing suspicions about their use of steroids into their votes.

Clearly, if it’s the former, Bonds, Clemens and Sosa will be inducted in a landslide, and the steroid era will be vindicated. If it’s the latter, they will be denied in resounding fashion, and players will have the three most-persuasive reasons yet to stop taking steroids.

I fear they will be denied.

This is based on the precedent voters set when they gave Mark McGwire only 24 percent – despite the fact that his stats made him every bit as worthy of induction.

(“Hall of Fame for Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, or End of Steroid Era in Baseball,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 29, 2012)

Well, I was right.

For here, in part, is how the Associated Press reported on the resounding statement the BWAA made yesterday by electing to induct no player into the Hall of Fame this year.

Steroid-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa were denied entry to baseball’s Hall of Fame, with voters failing to elect any candidates for only the second time in four decades.

Bonds received just 36.2 percent of the vote, Clemens 37.6 and Sosa 12.5….

It is instructive though that McGwire has received fewer votes on each successive ballot, garnering only 16.9 percent this year. Because this indicates that Bonds, the only seven-time MVP and reigning home-run king, and Clemens, the only seven-time Cy Young Award winner, will never be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

That is, unless America experiences a radical cognitive dissonance on use of steroids in professional sports. This, alas, will not come soon enough for the likes of Lance Armstrong. But I digress…

My only wonder is what will become of other eligible players from the steroids era like Alex Rodriquez, Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols…. After all, to be fair and consistent, the BWAA will have to deny entry to anyone who played during this era between 1990 and 2010. And, that a player never tested positive for any banned substance is clearly no defense given that Bonds, Clemens and Sosa never tested positive for anything.

Frankly, I don’t know what else to say at this point except to share a few excerpts from some of the far-too-many-to-count commentaries I’ve written on this topic:

Baseball ‘purists’ are so outraged that they are calling for all records set over the past decade to be eradicated because they were probably achieved by pumped-up cheaters. Yet these cheaters were the ones who rescued the game from almost terminal disinterest after the baseball strike of 1994. And team owners and fans alike knew full well that the sudden supernatural performances of once mediocre players did not result from pumping iron during that strike.

At any rate, so what if players take steroids. It’s, essentially, a victimless vice – far less poisonous than alcohol. And where steroid junkies usually endanger only fellow players on the field, drunks endanger all of us on the highway (and in so many other ways).

(“Baseball Is Juiced, So What!” The iPINIONS Journal, February 18, 2005)

Steroid use has flourished in Baseball and other professional sports pursuant to an open conspiracy among players and team owners to feed the gladiatorial lust of fans who want to see stronger, faster athletic cyborgs perform for their atavistic enjoyment. And, of course, the more fans revel in their steroid-fuel feats of athleticism, the bigger the players’ contracts (and even bigger the owners’ bottom line) become.

(“Baseball’ MVP … Is a Steroids Junkie, Duh!” The iPINIONS Journal, March 8, 2006)

Forget all of the talk about his use of steroids or putting an asterisk next to his name, Barry Bonds is the new home-run king of Baseball today – having blasted his 756th homer last night on his own field of dreams in San Francisco…

Just as the achievements of players like Babe Ruth have not been diminished even though they drank alcohol during prohibition, the achievements of players like Barry Bonds should not be diminished even though they took performance-enhancing drugs during the steroid era.

So, asterisk this!!!

(“Bonds Should Be Cheered, Not Jeered As Baseball’s New Home-Run King,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 8, 2007)

Policing drugs in professional sports is not only Orwellian but utterly futile. After all … athletes have always, and will always, do or take anything that might give them a competitive advantage. And if what they do or take poses no harm to anyone except themselves, who cares?!

(“Decriminalize Drugs…Especially in Sports,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 3, 2006)