Perry OK with cheaters in Hall, but not Rose
Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry, who admitted to doctoring baseballs during his career, doesn’t mind cheaters being inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside him, but he says there’s no room in Cooperstown for gamblers.
If it were up to Perry, Barry Bonds, baseball’s home run king, would be in the Hall of Fame.
And if it were up to Perry, Pete Rose, baseball’s hit king, would forever be out.
“I think (Rose) did the worst thing possible,” Perry said on a conference call Wednesday, “worse than steroids.
“When you put money on a game to win or lose, it doesn’t matter what it is. (The sign forbidding gambling) is something that you see when you come into the clubhouse, and you see it when you go out.
“He’s paying the price right now. I love Pete. I loved to see him play. I hate that he’s in the position that he’s in.”
While Rose is banned from baseball and has never been on the Hall of Fame ballot, Bonds has been on the ballot since he became eligible. Yet, his career tainted by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative scandal, he has never received more than 44.3% of the vote in his first four years of eligibility. Bonds, a seven-time MVP, is gaining strong momentum this year but will fall short of election, according to published ballots collected by Ryan Thibodaux.
“I think he’ll get in eventually,” says Perry, who was inducted in 1991. “When you have a player like that, pretty soon you have to forgive him and put him in.
“I think the writers maybe will change their minds, and a few years down the road, some of them will get in. (Steroids) are something they got caught up into, and I guess it took awhile to get out of it. They’re paying the price now. “But I can forget and forgive.” Hall of Famer John Smoltz, who was inducted last year, thinks no one who used performance-enhancing drugs should ever be voted in.
The trouble, he says, is proving who actually cheated.
“I’m trying to figure out what is actual, and what isn’t,” said Smoltz, who joined Perry and former player Kevin Millar on a conference call promoting the second annual Diamond Resorts Invitational charity golf tournament. “To me, the one thing forgotten in this thing is the mission statement. Character is a big part of it. You have to not only have the numbers, but the character that matches it. ...
“If you have firsthand knowledge that a player used, or has publicly acknowledged it, I think it’s an easy decision. When it is circumstance and evidence, and you don’t know, and just follow the rumor mill, that’s difficult for the writer to be judge and jury.”
If you disregard the steroid taint to Bonds’ career and go on purely performance, Smoltz says, it’s a nobrainer that Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame. “Barry Bonds is the greatest player I have ever played against,” Smoltz says. “Barry Bonds could do things like no other player. I have tremendous respect for Barry Bonds.”
Still, no matter how great they were during their careers, Smoltz says, if Bonds or seventime Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens ever acknowledge they used steroids, they shouldn’t be able to tarnish the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.
And if they were legitimately clean, he says, welcome to the club.
“I have no knowledge. None,” Smoltz says of their alleged use. “I can just follow the speculation scale like everyone else.”
Bonds and Clemens are seeing a huge spike this year in the early Hall of Fame returns, which reveals a voting percentage hovering around 65%. While Perry thinks it’s simply a matter of voters softening their stance on steroids, several writers have publicly stated they changed their vote after Bud Selig, commissioner during baseball’s steroid era, was elected last month into the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee.
Selig, offended by this logic, declined to publicly address the voters’ stance toward Bonds and Clemens in a telephone interview with USA TODAY Sports.
Still, he’d like to remind everyone that he began negotiating in 2002 with the players association to implement steroid testing. Major League Baseball adopted its first steroid-testing program in 2004, three years after being implemented in the minor leagues, which didn’t require union approval.
“Let me say this, I fought long and hard for the (drug-testing) program,” Selig said, “and we put in the toughest program in North American sports. It’s ridiculous to think anything else.”
“If you have firsthand knowledge that a player used, or has publicly acknowledged it, I think it’s an easy decision.” Hall of Famer John Smoltz