Originally Posted by
Olympic Fan
I don't buy the argument that "Bonds and Clemens would have gotten in without the steroids" therefore we should give them a pass.
Well, Shoeless Joe Jackson would have gotten in had he not taken $5,000 to throw the World Series ... Pete Rose would have gotten in had he not bet on baseball (after his playing days were over).
A cheater is a cheater and whether he would have been hall of fame or not, once you cheat, you forfeit your ticket to Cooperstown.
I also refuse to buy the "everybody did it" argument. In the first place, everybody DIDN'T do it. The best evidence, based on baseball's anonynmous tests (which is some of the evidence excluded in the Bonds and Clemens trials -- the courts ruling that because the players were promised anonymity that their positive tests couldn't be used against them) is that about 15 percent of the players tested positive for PEDs. 85 percent didn't cheat.
Even if the number of cheaters was larger, I wouldn't buy the "everybody did it" argument. That's the lamest excuse in the world -- it's the excuse Carolina fans use when evidence of their corrupt athletic/academic program is revealed. It's the evidence Nixon supporters used after Watergate.
You are welcome to believe what you want. But I have NO sympathy for cheaters -- if I voted, Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Palmero, Manny, McGuire would NEVER get a vote. I am ahuge Yankee fan, but I would never vote for Pettitte or A-Roid.
That does not wipe out 15 years of baseball history. There were plenty of stars from the steroid era who were never linked to steroids -- Jeter and Chipper Jones, Frank Thomas, Albert Pujols, Greg Maddox, Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Wade Boggs ... they are all hall of famers in my book. John Smoltz. Mariano Rivera, Pudge Rodriguez -- clean Hall of Famers.
If I come across compelling evidence that any of those guys cheated, I'll cross them off my list of heroes. It would break my heart to learn that Jeter, Chipper or Maddox were doing PEDs. I don't believe they were. But if they were ...