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By Steve
Lyons
FOX Sports West and PRIME
TICKET
LYONS
ARCHIVE
Only two Major Leaguers were voted into the
Hall of Fame last week, Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven, and I certainly don't
have a problem with either of those guys getting in. Alomar defined what it
meant to be an impact player at the second base position for more than a decade,
and Blyleven won 287 games---even if he did have to wait almost 20 years for the
Hall to recognize how good he was.
What I'm mildly upset
about is who didn't get in, or even close. Guys like Mark McGwire, Rafael
Palmeiro and to a lesser extent, Larry Walker, Jeff Bagwell and Lee
Smith.
"Uh, oh," you say, knowing that I've opened that
whole PED conversation, and you're darned right I did.
Somebody should.
It's not like I'm in
favor of legalizing steroids or anything like that. But when is everybody going
to wake up and acknowledge that they were, in fact, a big part of the game for a
period of time and the stats of the game were altered because of
them.
Does that make it a little unjust for the players in
the 1950s and 60s that put up numbers that were untainted by drugs, or the
players of today's game that had the moral fortitude to "just say no" and played
the game clean?
Yes, and that stinks for them and all the
rest of us that wish the game was pure.
But where do these
Hall of Fame voters get off being judge and jury for whatever whim they have
about what's a good moral decision or not? These are the same guys that sit in
the press box and bad mouth most of the players, try to get the press box meal
without paying for it and then break five traffic laws on their way home. They
are the same guys that have never, ever voted ANYBODY unanimously to the Hall.
Not Babe Ruth, not Mickey Mantle, not Joe DiMaggio, not Willie Mays, not even
Hank Aaron.
Just do your job and vote according to the rules
set up for Hall of Fame voters. Those rules include analyzing the numbers a
player accumulated, the impact he had on his team and the game itself, his
community involvement, number of titles he won and awards he won,
right?
Wrong.
I tried to look the rules
up for a vote to get into the Hall of Fame and couldn't find a definitive set of
standards any of these voters use. They just get to do what they want. If a
writer didn't like you, you're not in. If you didn't do interviews...
out!
There has been different ERAs in the sport. The
deadball era, the defensive era, the era of segregation, the era of offensive
explosion---which, coincided with the steroid era.
There.
It's been named. The Steroid era.
Just understand the impact
it had on the game and move on.
Ten years from now, won't we
all have to recognize what Barry Bonds, McGwire and Palmeiro did on the field in
this game? Especially since we don't have absolute proof of who did or didn't
cheat? Are we sure that we haven't already inducted a Hall of Famer who used
PED's?
I'm not happy about it but I am a realist and the
simple fact is that some people cheated this great game of
ours.
I, for one, can live with that because I know that it
was going on long before steroids. The day after a new game is invented,
somebody is looking to get an edge, most likely from
cheating.
It is my view that 10 years from now, all of the
players that are not being considered for the Hall of Fame now, will be in the
Hall of Fame later, simply because we will have a greater perspective then, than
we do now.
Even if that Hall of Fame writer still has his
"holyer than thou" complex.
Palmeiro has more than 500
Home Runs and more than 3,000 hits. Both of those numbers are bench marks...sure
signs of the Hall of Fame.
He got 11% of the vote.
Shame on those voters who did not vote for
him.
