Should the Baseball Hall of Fame Allow Steroid Users?

Introduction: The Hall of Fame Cannot Ignore Drug Use

Cleansing the Baseball Hall of Fame would do nothing but create an empty building in Cooperstown. The Baseball Hall of Fame categorically cannot ban steroids or any other drugs because a substantial number — possibly even the majority — of the men featured there used some kind of drug. As Chafets points out, "the greatest stars anyone has ever seen" were on the juice, and their names are already in the Hall of Fame. Suddenly decrying the entry of players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens is hypocritical and sends the wrong message. If the whole goal of the anti-doping movement is to set the right example for young people, then the Baseball Hall of Fame should start by setting an example of honesty. The Hall of Fame should allow players who used steroids, and should even consider a dedicated exhibit on the use of drugs in baseball in order to foster a more open dialogue about the issue.

A Normalized Practice with No Golden Era

Baseball players and other professional athletes use performance-enhancing drugs because doing so had been normalized — albeit not discussed openly with the media — until recently. As Nightengale notes, "Major League Baseball didn't even have a steroid drug-testing policy until 2004, with no punishments levied until 2005." That means that until 2004, any baseball player could have been using whatever he and his coach wanted in order to ensure the best performance outcomes. The use of drugs was not considered bad practice or poor form; it was simply part of the game.

Chafets also notes that many fans imagine some "golden era" of baseball in which the stars were clean. Yet since the early days of the sport, athletes have been taking pills and injecting themselves in order to get the results they wanted (Chafets). There was no "golden era" of clean players. The notion that drug use is a modern corruption of a once-pure game is a myth that the Hall of Fame, by its silence, has helped perpetuate.

Inconsistent Standards and the Relativity of Statistics

If the anti-steroids movement believes that baseball would be more honest and consistent in its celebration of standardized levels of play without drugs, it is mistaken. There are no consistent standards in baseball because the game itself has changed over time. Just as levels of performance shift across eras, so too do the rules and physical conditions of play. The Hall of Fame needs to be more forthcoming about the relativity of statistics. The ways in which statistical data have been gathered, the size of gloves, and the heights of pitcher's mounds have all changed over the years, leading to misleading comparisons across generations.

Yes, players today may use more sophisticated combinations of performance-enhancing drugs than those used in the 1920s, but that information should be displayed openly and honestly for the viewing public. As Chafets argues, "If everyone has access to the same drugs and training methods, and the fans are told what these are, then the field is level and fans will be able to interpret what they are seeing on the diamond and in the box scores."

Works Cited

Chafets, Zev. "Let Steroids Into the Hall of Fame." The New York Times, 19 June 2009. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/opinion/20chafets.html

Nightengale, Bob. "Mike Piazza's Deserved Hall of Fame Election Could Pave Way for Bonds, Clemens." USA Today, 5 Jan. 2016. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/bob-nightengale/2016/01/04/mike-piazza-hall-of-fame-steroids-barry-bonds-roger-clemens/78273548/