“What’s the Deal?” Another Steroid Scandal Leaves Fans with ‘Roid Rage

Opinion

Here we are, the first of August, and the baseball season is full swing. With the top teams battling for a shot at the playoffs and each game being crucial to the end of the year, the focus for most fans is not the battle on the diamond, but rather the battle behind closed doors between Major League Baseball and the players that were involved with Biogenesis clinic in Florida.
MLB commissioner Bud Selig has got to be disgusted with the fact that steroids are still a very big problem in the sport, but it seems like the longtime head of baseball may finally be putting his foot down with the proposed lifetime ban of Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. While the expulsion of Rodriguez, now 38 years old, will close a chapter on the career of one of the most loathed baseball players that the league has ever seen, it will not remove the 647 home runs, 1,950 RBIs, or the 2,901 hits he piled up in his career.

Although Rodriguez’s ban would surely remove any chance of A-Rod ever making it to Cooperstown, there is still many questions left for the big-time home run hitters that dominated the 1990’s and early 2000’s, guys like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and even the Home Run King* Barry Bonds. With four of the top 10 players on the all-time home run list being suspected of using steroids, this very difficult question remains: how does the Baseball Hall of Fame handle the Steroids Era?

To me, there is honestly no right answer to this problem: you can obviously understand the HOF refusing to allow cheaters enter their brotherhood, but you can also see how odd it may be to ignore more than a decade of baseball. The real shame of the situation is how there is a legitimate possibility that the man who hit more home runs that anyone in baseball will never be inducted. When certain delicate situations come up in life, compromises must be made, and it’s no different in the Steroid Era standoff. As frustrating as it must be to some of the fans and former players, I think it is in the best interest of all involved for those who put up the numbers to be inducted in the Hall of Fame—under one strict condition.

The condition involving the Steroids Era is simple: the Baseball Hall of Fame builds a special portion of the museum that openly displays a plaque explaining the Steroids Era and how it may have affected/influenced their career numbers. This makes the situation much easier for those involved, especially the voters who understand the impact these players had on Major League Baseball but don’t want to be “the guys that put a cheater into the Hall”.

It is definitely not fair to those players who stayed clean and were negatively affected when they competed with these guys (i.e. the pitcher who gave up the home runs, the outfielder who was cut), but at this point there’s not really much you can do because of the length of time that steroids were rampant. At this point the options aren’t very satisfying, but for those who say nay to letting these guys in, I sincerely hope they hold the same position towards the commissioner who allowed it to happen all of these years.

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