2023 Baseball Hall of Fame Class

Still not fair to players who didn't use.

 

Use what? That's the whole problem. Players have been "using" for 70 years, if not longer.

 

I don't think of greenies as any more a performance enhancer than a couple cups of coffee.

If anything, when the jitters set in, greenies make it harder to concentrate.

Nor do amphetamines make you stronger.

Nor did they extend anyone's career by speeding healing.

So for my version of this argument, I limit the consideration of "performance enhancement" to anything after the revolution in anabolic steroids. Certainly HGH and EPO and anything in that vein. (wockawockawo0cka)

If you widen the definition too much, eventually you have to include contact lenses and Lasik etc., etc., ad infinitum.

 

I'm a Red Sox fan, but I really hope Mattingly makes it. Him and Johan Santana are, for me, the types of comet-like players who deserve enshrinement over compilers like McGriff, Palmeiro and Baines. If you're the best of the best for the better part of a decade, you deserve to be elected IMHO.

If Belle gets in before Dick Allen, I'll shit twice and die.

BTW, do we know what the composition of the committee is? Will the likes of Tony LaRussa or Rod Carew be helping old teammates across the line?

 

That's the thing. Players can use drugs to help focus, such as Adderall. Stimulants can provide a burst of energy at the right moment. These may not provide as much enhancement as steroids or HGH, but they are cheating. So is corking a bat. What about the Astros? Should Jose Altuve be banned from Hall of Fame consideration?

It's all subjective bullshit. What is objective is what those players did. Put them in with a plaque explaining what they did wrong, too. Better than than try to deny the actual history of the game, which is what they are doing when they leave out guys like Bonds and Clemens.

 

Know what I'd like to see in the perfect world we'll never live in?

Two ballots from each HoF voter. One's their ballot with the character clause. The other is their ballot as if the character clause didn't exist.

Let's see just who is following the rules, and who actually thinks they hold this kind of moral authority.

 

Again, not everyone used.

Irrespective of how we define "performance enhancement" - even if we create a super-nuanced spectrum from nicotine to EPO - not every player is part of that continuum.

I don't reject that argument outright, but I remind people none of this is objective. The numbers are the numbers, sure. But how they came to be the numbers is the question.

So it's a pretty sophisticated ethics argument.

And we shouldn't be guided by impatience or frustration as we try to untangle it.

 

You couldn’t be anymore wrong about greenies. Players wouldn’t even been able to get on the field without them.

 

I think there isn't a bad choice among them. I also prefer the short peak of excellence over the consistent compiler (Terrell Davis > Fred Taylor), and therefore appreciate the case for Mattingly, Murphy and Santana who I hope will be on a future one of these. If that's your standard though, it's hard to understand your case against Belle, who was the best hitter in baseball for a while, other than he was a jerk.

 

And amphetamines get you the exact same suspension as PED’s do. So it’s more than a couple cups of coffee.

 

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sp...ont-affect-baseball-like-steroids/3211871001/

 

They didn't bring suspensions to bear until the mid-2000s