But a clear message is being sent: the taint of performance-enhancing drug use is fading. The world is changing. Logic, reason, and realism are gaining ground.
Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Ivan Rodriguez were announced as the 2017 Hall of Fame class on Wednesday. Each has been connected with drug use in some way — Bagwell and Rodriguez with various degrees of PED suspicion, and Raines with his admission of cocaine use —
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In a perfect world, this will help sports to finally have an honest conversation about PED use that goes beyond boogeyman arguments.
Maybe that’s too much to hope for, but we’re going to find out relatively soon, because Bonds and Clemens are highly likely to be inducted in the next two or three years.
When Bonds and Clemens are inducted, the Hall of Fame will be better off. Bonds won seven MVPs, and Clemens seven Cy Young Awards. No other man has won either award as often.
Assuming they used PEDs, they would presumably join others already inducted who used the various pharmaceutical shortcuts of their time, most prominently greenies. As Buck O’Neil famously said, “the only reason players in my time didn’t use steroids is because we didn’t have them.”
But even if you disagree with everything in this column so far, here is an undeniable truth: Bud Selig was baseball’s commissioner through the rise and peak of steroid use, and he was just put in by a 15-member veterans committee.
The case that any PED user should be barred from the Hall is very difficult to make when the man who oversaw the whole thing is immortalized in bronze.
