Okay, I'm doing one more day's worth of break before I mercifully end my superhuman lineage entries.
Major League Baseball announced today that Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr would be enshrined in its Hall of Fame. While that's kind of but not really interesting, the big story has been Mark McGwire's lack of support. While his stats match up with any other great slugger, a potent anti-steroid sentiment kept him from getting close to the votes necessary.
Hall of Fame voters, I agree that steroids are bad. But is taking steroids any worse than than the crimes perpetrated by other legends of the game? Here's a brief list, for comparison.
Ty Cobb - hated black people
Mickey Mantle - loved booze
Hank Aaron - regularly farted and then blamed it on the umpire
Stan Musial - ran a brutal, bloody cockfighting circuit from his hotel room
Willie Mays - once robbed Stan Musial of his cockfight winnings
Nolan Ryan - in close games, shot blowdarts at the opposing batters
Cy Young - cyborg
Oddibe McDowell - terrible baseball player
Roberto Clemente - appeared in a homemade porn movie with Paris Hilton
Pete Rose - bet on baseball, then bet on his impending banishment from baseball, then bet Tom Sizemore would play him in a tv movie
Sandy Koufax - member of the Hell's Angels
Babe Ruth - gave Lou Gehrig such a violent wedgie that Gehrig developed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Let McGwire in, I say; maybe he'd class up the joint.
Posted by Cody at January 10, 2007 8:59 PMIt's interesting to compare sports here. McGwire never tested positive for a banned substance, yet people hate him. Meanwhile in the NFL, Shawn Merriman did test positive for steroids this year, and they're ready to give him Defensive Player of the Year.
Posted by: Cody at January 10, 2007 9:03 PMfyi, baseball writers are lame old white bastards
Posted by: xyz at January 10, 2007 9:06 PMYeah, one jack ass actually sent in a blank ballot just so Ripken wouldn't get in with 100% of the vote since no one else in history has. If voters are going to take it this seriously then why not have different tiers in Cooperstown. Top floor is where the big guns are at and as you work your way down each floor the players become less great. The 1st floor will be home to the second crapiest HOF's while the basement will be home to the players that did a few memorable things in their career but otherwise sucked balls in comparison to the real hall of famers (Bill Mazeroski, Kirby Puckett). I've always thought it would be cool if all of the HOF, dead and alive, could meet up one day so the likes of Ruth, Aaron and Gary Carter could swap stories.
Posted by: Pdiddy at January 12, 2007 12:28 PMThe HOF most definitely has floors or "rooms" as The Ticket calls them, and when you argue room assignments, the only number you don't use is the voting percentage of a bunch of douchebag sports writers.
And as far as the steroid stuff goes, baseball never made it a priority to keep drugs out of the games and then acted surprised that so many players were using them with the monster contracts being offered. McGwire's andro (and whatever else) use might have cost him a room, but it shouldn't cost him his hall entrance.
Posted by: Boj at January 12, 2007 1:10 PM