Morgan late on taking PED stance
Brennan: Fame voters have voted on users
On Tuesday morning, Baseball Hall of Fame vice chairman and former MLB great Joe Morgan sent a letter to Hall of Fame voters warning them of the possibility of steroid users being voted into the Hall.
Has this letter been lost in the mail for a decade?
“Over the years,” Morgan wrote, “I have been approached by many Hall of Fame members telling me we needed to do something to speak out about the possibility of steroid users entering the Hall of Fame. This issue has been bubbling below the surface for quite a while.”
Bubbling below the surface? Joe, we love you, but what in the world are you talking about? This issue has been churning so far above the surface that it has been screaming at us in 72-point headlines since Barry Bonds sent dozens of juiced home runs into McCovey Cove in the early days of this century.
How is it only now that you and your peers in the Hall of Fame have found the courage to speak out? Where were you when we really needed you, when you could have thrown your considerable weight behind a demand that all 89 players named in the 2007 Mitchell Report, for example, be ineligible to receive votes for the Hall?
This happens every year with Pete Rose. His name is never on the ballot. Why didn’t you push for that before Bonds, Roger Clemens and all those other scoundrels made their first appearance on the ballot?
Now, with Bonds and Clemens inching a bit closer to the magical 75% voting threshold (they received 53.8% and 54.1% of the votes last year, respectively), Morgan is understandably worried.
“A day we all knew was coming has now arrived,” he wrote. “Players who played during the steroid era have become eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame.”
Actually, Bonds and Clemens are now in their sixth year of eligibility, and it’s likely that some players who used performance-enhancing drugs are already in the Hall of Fame, but what Mor- gan said next was revealing.
“The more we Hall of Famers talk about this — and we talk about it a lot — we realize we can no longer sit silent. Many of us have come to think that silence will be considered complicity. Or that fans might think we are OK if the standards of election to the Hall of Fame are relaxed, at least relaxed enough for steroid users to enter and become members of the most sacred place in baseball. We don’t want fans ever to think that.”
I’d love to see a list of all the Hall of Famers who think as Morgan does. He should produce all the names. That would be powerful. Still woefully late, but powerful.
“We hope the day never comes when known steroid users are voted into the Hall of Fame,” he continued. “They cheated. Steroid users don’t belong here.”
Morgan is right that steroid users don’t belong in the Hall of Fame. But they also didn’t belong in baseball. If the players union hadn’t fought against stringent, Olympic-style drug testing for years, and if the owners hadn’t been willing to ignore the obvious to attract fans with home runs, the cheaters likely would have been caught and punished years ago.
Of course that never happened, so we’re left with a fiasco of a voting process year after year.
What else could Morgan have done? Can you imagine if he and a few dozen other illustrious names from baseball’s past had spoken out in this manner as Bonds was in the midst of his fraudulent march to Hank Aaron’s home run record?
Where were you then, Joe? You were in the broadcast booth, calling all those games on television. Why not speak out when you had the microphone and the audience to make a difference?
In his letter, Morgan issued a dire warning:
“It’s gotten to the point where Hall of Famers are saying that if steroid users get in, they’ll no longer come to Cooperstown for induction ceremonies or other events. Some feel they can’t share a stage with players who did steroids. The cheating that tainted an era now risks tainting the Hall of Fame too. The Hall of Fame means too much to us to ever see that happen. If steroid users get in, it will divide and diminish the Hall, something we couldn’t bear.”
I’m afraid you’re going to have to bear it. Inaction has consequences, which means baseball likely will get what it deserves: a diminished awards ceremony, a divided membership and a tainted Hall of Fame.