The HOF has decided that those banned from baseball are not eligible for recognition via a plaque. It withholds a high honor and recognizes that MLB and the HOF are symbiotic. On one hand, I wish that Rose were eligible and the writers just ignored him. That punishment would be worse; it would go from banishment to not being worthy. On the other hand, it’s pretty cool that the sport has a black list and some good players are on it– it makes the history more colorful.

(I’m not sure that impugning the integrity of the game falls under the category of personal shortcomings. I looked up Shoeless Joe’s vote totals, he received 2 votes –0.8%– in 1936, the first year of balloting and none thereafter. Hal Chase, also involved in the scandal, received his last vote in ’37. So the HOF following MLB’s banishment was organic, which makes it more powerful to me.)

So I think Pete Rose should be banned from MLB for life, but not from the HOF. The MLB ban ensures that a gambler won’t meddle with the integrity of the competition again and is also punitive in that it takes away employment in baseball as a means of earning income. The fact that Rose bet on baseball has nothing to do with the HOF, though. He still has the most hits ever. His personal shortcomings have no impact on that.

1) I watch baseball to be entertained, which means the absolute top performances possible. To me, the only thing that separates steroids from better nutrition and exercise is the health consequences of steroids. If there were a guaranteed way to safely administer ‘roids then I would want every single professional athlete in line. If the health concern is gone, steroids don’t strike me as any different than Lasik or Tommy John surgery (what’s natural about moving ligaments all around the body just because we can?).

2) In a world without steroids, McGwire would be an interesting case for the HOF. He is nowhere close to the best 1B, but the two narratives of the HR chase and the steroids story put him in for me. Steroids are/were a part of baseball; there’s no need to ignore them.

2.5) Nerdicus, I think the HOF is for the best players who didn’t bet on baseball. Betting on baseball is another category of bad. Steroids is players trying harder to win a competition. Betting on the game has to potential to remove the whole idea of competition all together.

The “Steroid Era” is as much a part of baseball history as any other era, i.e. the “Deadball Era” or the pre-Jackie Robinson era. There are times in baseball history when statistics are skewed, for a variety of factors.

Here are two examples:

There was a period in the 1930s when batting averages were severely inflated. In 1930, Bill Terry led the NL in hitting with a .401 average (Al Simmons led the AL with a .381 average and he hit .390 the next year). That’s amazing, but the league average in the NL in 1930 was .303. Batting .303 now gets you a big contract. When I look back at the batting averages of this era, it’s really impressive, but you have to put it in context and remember that “things were different then.”

In the 1960s, pitchers dominated. In 1968, Carl Yastrzemski led the AL with a .301 average. That same year, Bob Gibson led the NL with a 1.12 ERA and Luis Tiant led the AL with a 1.60 ERA. As a fan, when I look back at the miniscule ERAs of Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson and others, I am impressed, but I always take them with a grain of salt because “things were different then.” The league average ERA was 2.99 for the NL in 1968. That would win you a Cy Young Award now.

It’s no different with the so-called “Steroid Era.” The home run totals of McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Luis Gonzalez and others are eye-popping. But you just have to remember that “things were different then” because the players used steroids. The home runs still count, it was just easier to do it then, so it’s not as impressive as, say, Babe Ruth’s home run totals in the early 1920s.

The best players of the “Steroid Era” should be in the Hall of Fame, same as with any other era. That’s what the Hall of Fame is; it’s not the Hall of the Best Players that Didn’t Use Steroids or Bet on Baseball. There should be an exhibit in the Hall about the use of steroids and its effect on the game and its records. And there could even be a reference to steroids on a player’s plaque, if the steroid use has been admitted or proven.

But there should never be an asterisk next to a number in a record book. Rob Neyer recently wrote that the purpose of record books is to record what happened on the field. I know that Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001. So that’s the single-season home run record.