Town Hall

ESPN had a special SportsCenter yesterday. They had a panel of "experts" who talked about Barry Bonds and the HR record. I can't tell you everything they talked about because I didn't watch most of it. But, there was one point when members of the panel were saying that Bonds didn't belong in the Hall of Fame because he didn't meet the character standard of what a Hall of Famer should be. The name Pete Rose came up during the discussion as a great player who isn't in because of things he did off the field.

I've never been to Cooperstown, so I have not been brainwashed like the panelists who think it's an unbelievably sacred place. Maybe they need to get their priorities straight. Barry Bonds belongs in fraternity as soon as he's eligible, even if he used performance enhancing drugs. You can keep him out if no one else in there cheated to enhance performance. What's the purpose of corking bats? Enhancing performance. Theoretically, making a bat lighter will increase bat speed. Why did pitchers scuff balls and apply illegal substances? I don't think Gaylord Perry was trying to make things more difficult for himself. He was trying to enhance his performance by cheating, by doctoring the ball to get more action on pitches, in order to gain an advantage over his opponents.

Likewise, you don't put people into the Hall of Fame because they are good guys and keep them out because they aren't. Ty Cobb, from what I heard, was a mean, nasty guy who was also a racist. He's in. Bonds may be surly and arrogant (I don't really know, personally), but that's no reason to keep him out of the collection of the best baseball players ever.

Pete Rose is unlike Bonds in that the reason he is not in the HOF (betting on baseball) doesn't fall in the realm of "cheating". In the eyes of the commish, betting seems unforgivable because it brings into question the integrity of the game ... just look at what David Stern is going through right now. Also, Bonds is suspected of using performance enhancers at a time when it's widely believed that many (maybe most) players in the league were cheating in similar ways. There weren't, to the best of my knowledge, large numbers of baseball players and managers betting on games they were involved in during the time Rose was doing it.

Sticking with the HOF theme, does Craig Biggio belong in the Hall of Fame? He has solid numbers, made quite a few all-star teams and won some gold gloves. But, he was never an MVP caliber player. In fact, during the 90's, he was second fiddle on the Astros to Jeff Bagwell, who was the superior offensive weapon. By the numbers, you'd have to say he's a lock. But, when I think about the player Craig Biggio was, I'm not so convinced. He was a good player over 20 seasons. But, if you have 150 hits, 13 HR's and 23 SB's per year for 20 years, you end up with 3000 hits, 260 HR's and 460 SB's. Biggio was one of the best NL second baseman over a fair portion of his career, but 2B isn't exactly a stacked position. I'm not sure what exactly the voters use as their criteria, but my guess is Biggio slides into the HOF by a slim margin.