Bob Costas, whom I usually admire greatly and without reservation, is flat-out wrong in his stance on the issue of Barry Bonds going into baseball's Hall of Fame despite Bonds' being convicted earlier this week of obstruction of justice in connection with the Balco steroids scandal.
Costas says neither Bonds nor Roger Clemens will get his vote on the first ballot on which they appear, but they will on later ballots because both had established a body of work that is HOF-worthy before they clearly started "juicing" [as the somewhat unfortunate description goes--Ed.].
He then goes on to distinguish that status from players like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmiero, and others whose careers were not particularly distinguished until, as the dramatic improvement in their baseball performance suggests, they started using steroids. Costas has wrongly excluded McGwire from his own nuanced HOF criteria. Mark McGwire set the rookie record for home runs, 49, if memory serves, well before he ever began using androstenedione, and he never kept that use a secret, either. It wasn't illegal or against the rules at the time, and he said it helped him heal faster, not hit the ball farther.
Even if McGwire's defense is not 100% accurate [as Costas has also noted, healing faster means more time playing than otherwise, which is an indirect performance enhancement, at least in terms of career stats--Ed.], however, there is a valid point buried within it, to wit: steroids absolutely cannot make you hit a ball better than you could before. You still have to have the hand-eye coordination to make the fat part of the bat get enough of the ball at the proper angle to propel it on an upward (but not too far or even straight up) trajectory. Otherwise, no matter how strong you are, you're never going to hit the ball over the fences.
This is a bit tangential to my ultimate point, however. Costas is wrong about its being OK to vote Bonds and Clemens in on subsequent ballots because of their well-demonstrated actions. In the interview I saw on MLBTV, Costas pooh-poohed the "morality" aspect of the Hall of Fame, saying that was an indistinct and undefinable standard which can be ignored as easily as it can be enforced. So what? It exists. It's what has kept "Shoeless" Joe Jackson out of the HOF for more than half a century now, and what Jackson did--or didn't do--pales in comparison to the behavior of Bonds and Clemens both. All that Jackson did was keep his mouth shut about the impending Black Sox scandal, and he did that because it was the first time in all the years he'd played for the Sox that anyone else on the team had treated him as if he belonged. His stats from the 1919 World Series prove he didn't do anything to help throw it. Heck, if the White Sox had won, he might well have been the MVP if they'd had such a category then.
But Bonds has now been convicted of obstruction of justice. Even though that's a classic "white collar" crime, and first offenders normally get probation, it's still a criminal conviction. And it's not just a question of keeping one's mouth shut. Bonds has been convicted of actively impeding investigators and interfering with their ability to get to the truth of what they were investigating. This is not something to be taken lightly or to be pooh-poohed, even though it is not murder. It bespeaks of a fundamental lack of character on the order of Pete Rose's betting on baseball while he was a player and manager. It, too, brings disrepute to the game and sullies its unique standing as America's pastime. Hey--that isn't to be taken lightly--it's the legal justification for giving baseball an exemption from most anti-trust laws in this country.
Granted, Clemens hasn't been convicted of anything yet, but the corroborated descriptions of his adventures in moral turpitude are well-established. Not to mention his arrogance and his belligerent behavior when testifying before Congress in connection with this whole steroids mess. He will eventually be convicted of lying to Congress, once the charges are brought. There is not a shred of doubt that he did lie to the Congressional panel which called for his testimony. Joe Jackson's worst sins against baseball pale in comparison.
So, Mr. Costas, if you're going to vote to enshrine Bonds and Clemens in the Hall of Fame, do me one favor. Make sure Joe Jackson gets voted in first. Given that he has the third-highest all-time career batting average (.346, if memory serves), and given that his outfield play was described as so excellent that his glove was where triples went to die, he deserves to be in Cooperstown. [I will also concede that Mark McGwire was never so outstanding a defensive player, so if anything keeps him out of Cooperstown, it ought to be that lack of being the so-called "5-tool player," not his use of androstenedione--Ed.]
Do keep Pete Rose out, however. After he finally admitted the truth about his betting habits, after vociferously denying it for at least a decade, he simply doesn't deserve it, no matter how marvelously he played the game. Actually, since what Bonds and Clemens did also largely comes down to lying, too, maybe you should rethink your intention "someday, eventually" to vote them into the Hall of Fame.
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