Baseball Needs to Get it Right

I have been away from blogging the past couple of months as summer
is an extremely busy time for me.  My family comes first, I umpire
baseball games, for cash, and oh yeah, that 9-5 thing has me traveling all over
the country for the first time in 6 years.

A lot has happened over the last two
months that would have given me plenty of material to last me a lifetime.
 Aaron Hernandez, Whitey Bulger, Rolling Stone cover blunder and the
Boston strangler case came back to life, kind of.  All of these had my mind
turning but I just did not have time to punch my thoughts out.

The year plus long suspension of Alex
Rodriguez for his role in a steroid investigation got me thinking about the
state of baseball and its history.  Baseball had had a black eye for nearly
twenty years and it keeps getting bigger and bigger.  Baseball ignored
years of obvious steroid use by its players to try and restore its image that
darkened because of the 1994 players strike.

So now what does baseball do in this time
of turmoil?  They really don’t have a right to suspend Rodriguez for over
two hundred games because he had never been suspended before.  Major
League Baseball (MLB) can hide behind their claim of “best interest of the
game” clause all they want, but they have been ignoring it all along, why
now?

This year, for the first time in 48 years,
there was not a living member inducted into the Hall of Fame.  How can
that be? Barry Bonds was eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame last
year.  He is the all-time Home Run leader with 762.  He holds the
single-season record for home runs with 73.  Let us not forget he also
stole 514 bases.  How can he be not elected into the Hall of Fame?

What about Roger Clemens? He won seven Cy
Young Awards, had 354 wins and 4,672 strikeouts.  If he is not getting in
the Hall of Fame then I have bad news for all the pitchers dominating the
league, you aren’t good enough to get into the Hall of Fame.

So I am being a little facetious right now
if you haven’t guessed.  Do I think Rodriguez should have been suspended?
Yes, I do.  Do I think Bonds and Clemens deserve to be in the Hall of
Fame?  That’s a trickier question because they were well on their way
before taking steroids.  The problem is much bigger than entrance into the Hall
and suspensions.

Who is to blame in all of this? Everybody,
we all bought in, but the baseball media are the ones that should come under
scrutiny for this.  The hypocrisy that the baseball media shows is
unbelievable.  They glorified these players as they were chasing records
and titles.  They voted for them for MVP’s and Cy Young’s, then they don’t
vote those same players for entrance into the Hall of Fame.  I guess being on both
sides of the coin is a safe place to be.

So if Bonds and Clemens can’t gain entry
into the Hall of Fame because of their possible link to steroids you would have
to assume that their stats are null in void, right?  Wrong!  This is
the worst part of the argument.  The career leader in Home Runs, not in the
Hall of Fame.  The single season Home Run record holder, not in the Hall of
Fame.  The single game strikeout record holder, not in the Hall of Fame.
 Let us not forget about the career hits leader who was banned from
baseball (as a manager) and is not in the Hall of Fame as a player, but that’s
a different argument.

What point is baseball trying to make with
keeping Bonds and Clemens out of the Hall of Fame?  They want to rid
baseball from any links to steroid use.  That’s fine, I am on board with
that.  There are currently two problems with the way they are going about
it.  Baseball had not had a steroid policy when all these records were
being broken, so technically no rules were broken.  It’s not an excuse,
just a fact.  Secondly, if you want to keep players out of the Hall of
Fame, then you keep them all out, stats included.  Roger Maris should be
re-instated as the single season Home Run hitter, Hank Aaron should be
re-instated as the all-time Home Run leader and Kerry Wood would be your single
game strikeout holder.  That would send the message.

It’s time for baseball to right the ship
and if means hitting the reset button then so be it.  The fact of the
matter is that the MLB lost fans a long time ago and they really don’t care
that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are not in the Hall of Fame, I certainly
don’t.  I am a baseball purest and lost interest in the MLB a long time
ago.

3D