2023 Baseball Hall of Fame Class

I don't either, except to the extent the Player's Union has a say in what gets banned and what doesn't; what gets enforced and what doesn't.

For what it's worth, baseball winked at amphetamine use, even after Ball Four, but didn't do much of anything about enforcement until the Mitchell Report.

Brock Calls Baseball's Drug Program Neither Preventive Nor Corrective (Published 1971)

 

This has been going on for a long time. Maybe it is time for a little impatience.

Of course, not everyone used, but the time to deal with that was when they were playing, not now. It is an abuse of the character clause, one that makes a mockery of the Hall of Fame. Of course, there are other things that made a mockery of it before, such as waiting until Mariano Rivera to have someone get in with a unanimous vote because some jackasses left inarguable Hall of Famers off their ballots for decades.

 

“If you gave pitchers a pill that would guarantee they’d win 20 but take five years off their life they’d take it.”
Jim Bouton
Ball Four

 

Joe said he didn’t think either Trammell or Whitaker belonged
But that was the narrative
Trammell hustled, positioned himself perfectly and worked his ass off
Whitaker was talented but he coasted and didn’t play hard
Bullshit then, bullshit now

 

I honestly don't think it has much to do with the character clause. At least not for me.

For me it means the numbers are untrustworthy.

 

Baseball plan on outlawing amphetamines

 

Well, Charlie Hustle's right about one thing. He didn't know a damn thing about steroids.

 

They don't release that until they get closer to the vote. it is obviously what people want to see to try and connect the dots

 

The numbers are 100 percent trustworthy. They happened. Trying to deny them after the fact is where we start wading into bullshit.

 

Baseball is a numbers game.

Until we know how many extra base hits were a product of the Clenbuterol, and how many strikeouts we should attribute to HGH, those numbers aren't reliable. Lies, damn lies, statistics, etc.

I'm not advocating one approach or another for Cooperstown voters. But it's complicated.

And as someone with a vote for a different Hall of Fame, I'm empathetic and sympathetic to how hard it is to untangle performance enhancement after the fact.

 

It’s unknowable. Unquantifiable. An impossible standard to meet. Congratulations, you just erased 25 years of baseball.

 

I didn't.

The players did.

The players' union did.

MLB did.

The fans did.

Again, I don't have a dog in this fight, but it's pretty clear Hall voters are struggling to fairly assess and situate players from the Steroid Era.