Roger Clemens
2005
Of the 24 pitchers who have won 300 or more games in an MLB career, the elections last week of Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine means that only two men from this august group of winners now remains outside the rolls of membership in the Hall of Fame:
1) Roger Clemens, who received only 35.4% of the voting per cent in his second year on the ballot; and,
2) Randy Johnson, who will make only his first appearance on the BBWAA ballot in 2015.
We all know about the elephant in the living room that accounts for the BBWAA dismissal of Roger Clemens. The only substantive question is – how long can we continue to carry out the ruse of pretending that the man has a chance for induction when we all know that isn’t likely given his personal handling of the steroids personal use matter and his interaction with Congress on the issue. No matter. The fact remains. The man has 354 career wins, the 9th highest total of all time. We need to either induct Clemens and his PED brethren for what they done on the field as we also note publicly our concerns about the records-taint of the PED era. Or else, we need to ban Clemens and Company for life and turn the HOF front door keys over to those who think the place is only for choir boy achievers.
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The Pecan Park Eagle 
January 14, 2014 at 7:16 pm |
Bill – to help better understand your thinking, how would you vote on these players in terms of the Hall of Fame: Pete Rose (4,256 hits); Rafael Palmeiro (569 HRs) and Alex Rodriguez (654 HRs).
January 14, 2014 at 8:10 pm |
Tom – All three of those men belong in the HOF for their career field accomplishments and records. How could any real results-based Hall leave out of recognition, especially, the man who collected more hits than any other player in history? I have no interest in supporting a HOF that disingenuously purports to favor only the accomplishments of the super righteous while it also ignores all the criminals, addicts, and psychopaths who are already there in the Hall as members.
I don’t really think we need to hang each new dubious character inductee with a conviction plaque that goes with his induction plaque. I just think we need to treat candidates as real people who sometimes do stupid things in spite of their baseball greatness.
As for the over-the-line group, I would ban candidates who have been convicted of violent crimes committed against others – and against any player convicted of attempting to throw a game – or found guilty in a court of law of betting against his own team.
Those are the cat guts of my position on HOF candidates.
January 14, 2014 at 11:17 pm |
I’m still struggling with how I feel about all this.
Let’s take Palmeiro, for example, He did hit over 500 HRs, which normally would qualify him for the HOF. And yet, how many HRs would he have hit without the benefits of PEDs? Let’s assume Frank Robinson hit 586 HRs without steroids or any other PEDs. Should we consider Palmeiro and Robinson to be comparable players, and both worthy of the Hall, and ingore Palmeiro’s admitted PED use that undoubtably helped him hit over 500 HRs?
As for Rose, any baseball fan knows the story of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, and how every player is told you will be banned for baseball for life if you gamble on baseball. Rose chose to ignore that, and he knew the penalty. You say you would ban anyone “convicted in a court of law of betting against his team.” I believe Rose never bet against his team, but he did bet on baseball, and he got into heavy debt, as I recall, which could have made him susceptible to pressure from gamblers. Is that OK? If it is, what message do you send to future players about gambling. What message would you send to future players by inducting Palmeiro into the HOF? By inducting A-Rod?
I respect your opinion on these players, but I’m afraid I’m still struggling with the answer to these questions.
PS: As anyone who has visited the Hall knows, the accomplishments of Bonds, Rose and others are strongly noted in the museum portion of the Hall. The players, as individuals, are not admitted as “members” of the HOF. But their accomplishements are not ignored.
January 15, 2014 at 12:30 am |
Tom – Your points are all well-taken. I just happen to take more of an “it is what it is” approach to any statistic and an “are what they are” perspective on what people are, based on their behaviors. But as I tried to note, I do draw the line against HOF induction for murderers, rapists, child abusers, and the like.
Most of the people under fire here are not those folks. These guys are the loose cannons of ego, arrogance, greed, compulsion, envy, sloth, naivete, and stupidity – the collective forces behind both the “seven deadly sins” and everything else that eventually reveals an ugly head as egregious human error.
You are right about Palmeiro. We don’t know how many extra homers he bought from the extra strength he derived from PED and we never will know for the sake of comparing him to a great power guy like Frank Robinson. But we do know that PED does not provide the reflex and eye-hand skills it takes to make home run contact with major league pitching.
As for Rose, he remains the poster boy for compulsion. Sure, he knew about the “no gambling” sign in the clubhouses of every park in which he played, but here comes the power of ego, need, and greed, all rolled up in an all-out-need-to-risk-and-win like a giant tortilla cover that wrapped around his brain and his whole life to the wolves. Active compulsives always behave as they though they have no choice but to do what they are hooked on doing, anyway.
My position isn’t an easy one for me to take. It would be a lot easier for me to go back to the religious instructions of my childhood and make this Hall of Fame issue another matter of putting all into some new black and white categories of good and bad. Once we do that much, all that remains is for us to hold onto to the “good” and keep all the “bad” out.
In this instance, I have gone that far with violent behavior toward others. They are the “bad guys” in my mind. After that, everything else is really not up to the judgment of others. Anyone who gets into the HOF by cheating is responsible for sleeping well at night with that knowledge – and no one else can get the lesson for him.
So, back to Frank Robinson and Rafael Palmeiro. Let’s assume for a moment that the latter is inducted. Now he’s there with some numbers that are fairly comparable to Robinson.
The question now is – Are they both sleeping comfortably that they got to the Hall fairly? That’s the answer that we all have to come up with in each of our everyday lives for the things we both do – and fail to do
No one else can do that for us. And that’s about as clearly as I can express my position on this topic.
January 22, 2014 at 3:09 pm |
>>But we do know that PED does not provide the reflex and eye-hand skills it takes to make home run contact with major league pitching.<<
Bill, I'm pretty sure this is not correct.
See, for example, this brief overview.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5479307_performance-enhancing-drug-effects.html
January 22, 2014 at 3:12 pm |
I re-read your comment and understand the nuance better. Taking a PED, for example, won’t turn me into a 60-HR-per-year power hitter. But it very well could turn an already-established 45 HR-per-year power hitter into a 70-HR-per-year power hitter.
January 22, 2014 at 3:36 pm |
Mark –
Yes! That’s exactly my point!