This is Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame weekend. For Orioles fans, it’s a time for us to reminisce about the fabulous six, the Baltimore Orioles whose busts are on display in Cooperstown. Brooks and Frank, Jim “Cakes” Palmer, Edd-ie Murray, The Earl of Baltimore, and Iron Man, Cal Ripken, all played the game with distinction and grace and earned their way into the Hall.
In my Fan Cave, I proudly display the sculptures of all 6 HOF Birds, the greatest of the great.
For a fan like myself whose memories of the Orioles stretches back to the mid-50’s, this weekend brings to mind some of the other Hall of Famers I was so fortunate to watch in person at Memorial Stadium: In the 50s and 60s I watched Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford; Ted Williams, Harmon “Killer” Killebrew, Luis Aparicio, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, and of course Baltimore Southern High School’s Al Kaline. In the 70’s and 80’s I watched Johnny Bench, Reggie Jackson, Robin Yount, Dave Winfield and Tom Seaver all play on 33rd Street.
What a rich, rich history.
It’s too bad this year’s induction ceremonies will be muted because it carries a dubious distinction. For the first time since 1965, there will be no living inductees. The induction class consists of three deceased individuals: player Deacon White, umpire Hank O’Day, and executive Jacob Ruppert,all of whom died almost 80 years ago.
This is the Cooperstown Class of 2013. Three worthy individuals who died in the 1930’s.
Are you kidding me?
Why? We have baseball’s continuing problem with performance enhancing drugs to thank for this. Here are the 1st year eligible players that, based on statistics alone, should have been slam dunks for the Hall: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa. Others with the stats to enter the Hall include Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and Jeff Bagwell.
What they all have in common, of course, is that they either tested positive for PEDs, are strongly suspected of being on the “juice,” or their names turned up on drug dispensary paperwork for companites such as BALCO.
Who can forget these sights as these players testified before Congress; McGwire’s tortured double-talk while admitting to nothing, Palmeiro defiantly wagging his finger at the committee, and Sosa conveniently forgetting the English language he used so fluently with the media when he and McGwire were fraudulently chasing Roger Maris’ home run record in 1998?
MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is credited for pushing to clean up the sport, but he gets no props from me because he had to know, when he was at Busch Stadium and Wrigley Field in 1998 applauding Sosa and McGwire, that they were ‘roiding it up. He had to. So did the rest of MLB.
Now the only way these juicers will see an induction ceremony is with a ticket
PED usage is a tree that bears bitter fruit to this day. In spite of one of the implementation of one of the most stringent drug testing program in professional sports, the past year has seen the Biogenesis scandal implicate stars like Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun, with others still to be named. The beat goes on.
Clearly there is a financial benefit to doping. You play better, hit the ball harder and farther, recover from injury faster, and, oh yeah……get bigger contracts, all guaranteed. If Rodriguez never plays another game, the Yankees are on the hook for over $100 million to A-Roid through 2017, and the Milwaukee Brewers, a small market franchise who can hardly afford to make the type of financial mistakes that teams like the Yankees slough off, owe Lyin’ Ryan nearly that much. The Brewers’ future is shot as long as Braun’s contract is on the books.
What Can Be Done?
It’s clear that the financial payoff and incentives to chemically cheat have to be removed from the game and from player’s contracts. This will take the cooperation of MLB, the player’s union, and their agents, the last two of whom unfortunately have absolutely no incentive to cooperate. Right now, players can dope with impunity because the money is never in peril. Arrogance breeds contempt.
The cure has to be economic. MLB and the union have to make PED use the baseball version of the NCAA death penalty. Some have already called for a lifetime ban from the game for a first positive. That sounds a bit draconian for a first offense, but how about an immediate 100 game suspension and a termination, then renegotiation, of the player’s existing contract?
This is just one fan’s idea and certainly there are other measures MLB can take that would make it financial suicide to dope and play.
An old saying is that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. So it may be with chemically enhanced athletic performance. BALCO and Biogenesis may now be shuttered, but does any student of baseball seriously doubt that their spawn are already working on the next generation of performance enhancers?
Some players lost HOF votes this year because they were thought by the selectors as potential users. Voters are now justifiably suspicious of anyone who played from the 90’s to this point. Well, remove the doubt. Hit them where it hurts – in the wallet.
Make it a financial disaster to cheat and play.
