AN UNCOMFORTABLE VOTE
All-time greats were also cheaters and they don't deserve enshrinement in Cooperstown
The juxtaposition and incongruity have never seemed so disconnected: The deepest hall of fame ballot election in years is due later this month while baseball itself is mired in a lockout.
A sport with problems and complications — not all of them related — all intertwined at the very same time.
I stare at the names available to vote for on the National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and take stock of some of the greatest, most electric, most entertaining ballplayers anyone has ever seen: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, Big Papi David Ortiz. Each of them memorable in their own way. All of them related in one way or another to the steroid scandal years that still poisons the sport and certainly injures so much about the hall of fame.
I'm fortunate enough to be among the 400 or so voters for the hall. I take the responsibility, as almost all of us do, very seriously. I pore over pages and pages of statistics every year and balance that in some way with the eye test, still meaningful. And then I talk to others in the game who may have an opinion, one way or another, on any of the eligible candidates.
And then I vote, always nervously, never completely certain because of the contradictions.
When you saw Bonds play, you knew he was a hall of fame player. You didn't need statistics to tell you that. You didn't need numbers to indicate he was special. But then it gets complicated, because of his steroid usage, because of the manner in which his body shape changed, because of the 73 home runs he hit at the age of 36, and this is where the hall of fame gets me every voting year.
Bonds is probably the best player I've seen play live. And yet, I've never voted for him for the hall of fame. And I won't now, this being his 10th and final year on the traditional ballot.
I can't vote for him because of the wording of the hall's own rules.
The hall indicates that “voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team on which the player played.”
In the case of Bonds, who received 61.8 per cent of votes last year when 75 per cent is required for election, there is no questioning his playing ability, no questioning his record, no questioning the contributions he made to the teams for which he played.
That's the easy part for me. The complications for Bonds, and for so many players of quality, come from the rest of the qualifications.
Integrity. Sportsmanship. Character. The three words I trip over every year. If you cheated the way Bonds cheated, if you cheated yourself and the game, where is the integrity in that? Where is the sportsmanship, where is the character?
It would be easy — or certainly easier — if the hall of fame removed those terms. If it was just playing ability and contribution on the field, then Bonds would have been in the hall the first time he was eligible.
There are baseball writers who vote for him every year whom I have tremendous regard for and there are baseball writers I have tremendous regard for who will never vote for him. I'd like not to have to make the choice, personally. But as a voter, it's not my place to alter the rules. It's my place to vote. And so long as the words integrity, sportsmanship, and character exist within the rules, I can't find a way to vote for Bonds or Roger Clemens, also in his 10th and final year on the ballot, because I can't get past the hall's own words.
There was no player voted to the hall of fame last year because no player received the 75 per cent needed to be elected. That happens every once in a while, although not very often. But this year could represent something we have rarely seen before. It's one thing to have no players elected one year. But it's possible that no player will be elected for the second straight year. And that would mean no player elected to a sport that is currently locked out.
Part of the difficulty here is that so many of the sure-thing players are tied one way or another to steroid usage. The one player who isn't, Curt Schilling, and who should have been a hall of famer by now, is something of a despicable individual, more off the field, and he has personally asked to have his name removed from the ballot.
Which it will be after this year if he isn't elected. I have voted for Schilling in the past, even while I find his politics concerning. I will vote for him again this year. He received 71.1 per cent of ballots — close enough to be the only real candidate this year — and this is his last shot in this format. This is his 10th year.
There are no 11 years anymore. This is the first year for generational stars like Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz on the ballot, and what an easy and impressive first-ballot class they would have made, had it not been for the complications of previous votes and stances already taken on the issue of steroid usage in baseball.
This isn't the voters' fault. This is baseball's fault for first turning a blind eye to steroids and it's the hall's fault for not adding more clarity to a subject that is rather confounding.
But you can't vote for Rodriguez, really, if you don't vote for Bonds and Clemens.
You can't vote for Ortiz if you don't vote for Rodriguez, Bonds, and Clemens.
You can't vote, as some have, for Bonds and not Clemens.
And not far away from this group is Manny Ramirez, whose statistics are among the best who ever played. Ramirez, unlike Bonds and unlike Clemens, was the first high-profile player to be suspended because he failed a drug test.
Rodriguez admitted to his use of PEDS after denying he used any substances. Do you credit Rodriguez for eventually coming clean or do you punish him for his years of denial or those in which he was apparently juiced?
For all the evidence there is on Bonds, he is baseball's all-time leading home run hitter and single-season leading home run hitter, he never failed a drug test that was made public in the big leagues. There have been books, though, detailing his steroid usage, the most complete of them being, Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, Balco, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports by Mark Fainaru-wada. Read that and there is no argument regarding Bonds and PEDS. Read that and there is no doubt what Bonds did.
Just as there is little argument about Clemens and steroid usage, even though he never failed a major-league test that was made public, either
The best players on this hall of fame ballot, Schilling aside, are Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez, Ramirez and Ortiz. You're allowed to vote for as many as 10 players. Those, under other conditions, would be my first five votes. Six if you count Schilling, who could still be the one player elected this year.
But you stare at the ballot and, if you're like me, you eliminate Bonds and Clemens, you eliminate Rodriguez, Ortiz, and Ramirez, and all the while your guts are churning. This is a year in which who I am not voting for seems more important than those I will select.
In previous years, I voted for Omar Vizquel, the best American League shortstop I've ever seen, and it's my belief that defence in baseball doesn't get the respect it deserves from hall voters. But now with accusations of domestic abuse and other forms of abuse becoming public in the past year, what to do with him on the ballot now. He was fifth in voting a year ago, named on 49.1 per cent of the ballots, just behind Schilling, Bonds, Clemens, and Scott Rolen, who I haven't voted for in the past. Vizquel will lose votes this year, including mine.
It somehow doesn't feel right to stare at the names of Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez, and Vizquel and yes, Ortiz and Ramirez, and leave the box unchecked. Just as it wouldn't feel right to vote for them.
This is baseball as we're about to enter 2022 without knowledge of when pitchers and catchers will report, locked out and locked down, with a possible hall of fame class of none and voters uncertain and uncomfortable about how to proceed now or in the future.