By Edwin Cooney
Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds
first knock at the Baseball Hall of Fame door last January might have been
heard, but it was hardly heeded by the Baseball Writers' Association of America
which possesses the keys to that hallowed institution.
The reason for the BBWAA’s deafness apparently has to do
with the insistence by a significant portion of its membership that by using
steroids and/or human growth hormone, the above former superstars cheated their
way to baseball immortality.
Two years ago, I began my comments on the 2011 baseball
season by asserting the wisdom of French educator and philosopher Jacques
Barzun’s observation that anyone who wants to understand the heart and mind of
America must learn baseball. There
is much wisdom to this observation, for it encompasses much more of the
American character than perhaps even Professor Barzun ever imagined.
Of course, much of America is preoccupied with baseball for
the majority of every year.
Americans are rightly proud of baseball’s symmetry, its efforts to free
itself from gambling, its meaningful and ongoing struggle with racism, and its
perception of itself as morally upright if not absolutely pure.
However, both baseball and American society demonstrate time
and time again their capacity to ignore their sins. Consider the following:
First, in 1920, baseball outlawed use of the spitball by
future pitchers. In 1921, its new commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis,
banned the eight Chicago White Sox responsible for throwing the 1919 World
Series to the Cincinnati Reds, but it made no move (in fact it resisted until
1945) any move to do away with the unwritten color barrier against black
players.
Second, baseball owners, like their brethren throughout
American enterprise, have benefitted from the wave of public support any time
they have been challenged by any single player. For instance, back in 1938 when Joe DiMaggio held out
against the Yankees for a healthy salary increase, most baseball writers worked
for newspapers whose corporate owners sided with the wealthy and mighty
Yankees. The Yankees, along with the other major league teams of that era,
covered the expenses of newspaper writers on the road. Thus, although individually sympathetic
to Joe DiMaggio, a first generation working class man of Italian heritage,
baseball scribes wrote articles supporting the mighty Yankees’ punitive actions
against “joltin’ Joe.” What this
demonstrates is that Americans may be influenced by baseball, but they have a
lot more on their national plate than whatever appears to be stacking up on
baseball’s home plate.
Third, people appear to be more resentful when
"nonenterprising types" make a lot of money than when "corporate
types" make a lot of money.
This gets especially sticky when those non-corporate big buck earners
are of minority and/or Latin American heritage.
Yes, I’m guilty of having just read Jose Canseco’s 2005 book
“Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids and Smash Hits.” Canseco clearly understands why he will never be voted into
the Hall of Fame despite the fact that he hit nearly 500 home runs in his
career. He believes, and I find it
hard to argue with him, that the reason he won’t be voted into the Hall of Fame
is the same reason he didn’t hit 500 home runs. As he points out, corporate
baseball decided to punish and thus exclude the unashamed father of steroid and
growth hormone distribution, even though it benefited handsomely from more home
runs, the product of that distribution. Those steroid and human growth home
runs, Canseco points out, aided baseball in its highly successful effort to
regain popularity and profit in the wake of the 1994 baseball strike. Yet,
corporate baseball decided to punish Canseco when knowledge of the use of the
substances that created those home runs became controversial.
Consider these two truths! First, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and, yes, Jose
Canseco were absolutely electric when they came up to the plate. Roger Clemens was electric on the
mound. That means that almost
everyone who saw them perform, even if rooting for the opposing team, was
usually mesmerized when each one of these men performed the skill he built his
body, mind and nerve to apply.
Second, everyone around baseball including players, owners, and writers
(who, after all are in the business of selling books, newspapers and providing
for entertaining analysis during highly commercialized media broadcasts)
prospered during McGwire’s, Sosa’s, Clemens’, and certainly Barry Bonds’ era of
“...wild times, rampant ‘roids and smash hits.” At the time these men were ingesting steroids and human
growth hormone, they were in no violation of the laws or mores of
baseball. In addition, neither the
baseball owners nor the officials objected to the distribution of these
substances until forces outside of baseball raised questions about use. Thus, if harm was done to baseball by
the distribution and use of steroids and human growth hormone, all of baseball,
not just this handful of Hall Of Fame candidates, should be culpable. Thus, I can find no harm to either
baseball or to the reputation of the Baseball Hall of Fame if these men were
admitted to the Hall.
America, like baseball, its favorite sport, is riddled with
contradictions. Baseball is pure
yet "stealing" is a part of both its tradition and its
structure. America is a democracy
but we elect our presidents through the Electoral College, an archaic
eighteenth century system of selection that flies in the face of the concept of
“popular government” -- yet no part of the body politic is likely to overturn
any time soon. Finally, although
Americans almost always insist on consistency in matters both great and small,
the fact is that perhaps the most consistent aspect of our character is our
inconsistency. We are the people
and the people must always prevail.
Listen, McGwire, Clemens, Sosa, and big bad Barry Bonds are
knocking still louder at the door of baseball’s Hall Of Fame. Perhaps we’d better let ‘em in. As for Jose, don’t bother. I think he’s
already sneaked in through the knothole!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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