Baseball Hall of Fame results should tell us something

The results of the 2007 voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame were announced the other day, and I have to say I wasn’t surprised Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn both made it in their first year of eligibility.

Simply put, they were two of the classiest individuals ever to play the game, on and off the field. Not only do their stats measure up, they both had significant career achievements that made their election a virtual certainty. Both had 3,000 career hits - no one with 3,000 career hits eligible for the Hall of Fame isn’t enshrined - other than Pete Rose, and that’s another story.

Gwynn won eight National League batting titles, and Ripken played in more than 2,600 consecutive games as well as redefining the shortstop position forever.

More than anything, the deportment of both men was second to none. They were both wonderful ambassadors for the game, great role models for youngsters, and neither’s reputation was ever tainted by a whiff of scandal.

Which, unfortunately, is more than we can say for others on this year’s ballot – not to mention some who will be appearing on subsequent ballots.

A lot was made this was the first year on the Hall of Fame ballot for Mark McGwire, and I was curious how voters would pass judgement on his baseball legacy. For the record, McGwire received the votes of 23.8 per cent of voters this year – enough to keep him on the ballot for another year, but far behind Ripken and Gwynn. McGwire finished his career with 583 home runs and, for a while, held the single season record with 70. The joint pursuit by he and Sammy Sosa of Roger Maris’s record in 1998 was given a lot of credit for bringing baseball back from the 1994 lockout.

The voters have clearly spoken: he didn’t deserve to be elected on his first try – which isn’t to say he won’t be elected someday. Does he deserve to be a Hall of Famer at all, given that, for most of his career, he was a one-dimensional player at best?

There aren’t too many players with 500 career home runs who aren’t in the Hall of Fame but, in McGuire’s case, one might argue that’s all he could do. He was a decent player as a younger man, but also had full seasons in which he barely hit .200, much less .300.

At the same time, his lifetime batting average is almost identical to Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, and he hit more home runs. I’m not hearing anyone now saying Reggie Jackson doesn’t belong in the hall, nor did I at the time he was elected.

Then there is the burning question of whether or not McGwire (and other modern-day sluggers) knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs – an issue he neatly sidestepped during Congressional hearings into the subject by ‘refusing to talk about the past’.

The issue of steroids is likely to become a real moral dilemma for Hall of Fame electors as this generation of home run hitters retires and becomes eligible for election.

There’s no question there are people in the Baseball Hall of Fame that weren’t perfect. Babe Ruth was hardly a saint, and both Ty Cobb and ‘Cap’ Anson took a back seat to few when it came to being racist. But, to the best of our knowledge, they didn’t cheat.

As a voter, do you concentrate on the positive things Mark McGuire did for the game without asking yourself just how many of his 583 home runs were ‘clean’, especially given the rate at which he hit homers late in his career?

Or, is that unfair to other home run hitters who are already in the hall?

Sometime in 2007, Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron’s career home run record of 755. It will be one more accomplishment in what has, in statistical terms alone, surely been a career more than worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame. On the other hand, some consider Bonds the ‘poster boy’ for steroid use, and argue his records are tainted and should be discounted. Unfortunately, until he ‘comes clean’ and admits he either did or didn’t, it’s all just speculation. He’s not always been the friendliest of people, but if that alone was a barrier to induction, there would be a lot more than Bonds on the outside looking in.