Steriods and the Hall of Fame

I have written a lot about baseball, steroids, and the Hall of Fame and I am not sure I have been consistent. But here is my current thinking (in response to this NY Times piece).

If we were going to be consistent about how we select people for the Hall of Fame, we would either prevent everyone who used from selection into the Hall of Fame, or we would ignore whether they used or not and vote strictly on performance. The former strategy is impossible and the later, while consistent, feels unsatisfying - like there must be a more just approach.

So if we shoot for something more satisfying, we might decide not to vote for people we know used steroids. This strategy will affect Mark McGwire, Raphael Palmeiro, and Barry Bonds. But many journalists are also guessing, which can affect someone like Jeff Bagwell that may or may not have used.

The great struggle with this issue is that each option is imperfect; every choice seems to be an injustice to someone. Voting strictly on performance is an injustice to the players that did not use and are therefore likely being overlooked (as they were likely outperformed by their peers that did use). Punishing those that did use, depending on how strict your standards of evidence are, will either avoid punishing some that have escaped detection or punish some that are accused but did not use - or both.

Out of those three options, none feels much better than the others. But I think I lean towards punishing those where there is good evidence that they used. We have to accept that some got away with it. There is nothing we can do about it. Considering that though, I would hope that voters keep their standards of evidence pretty strict. I would rather not punish someone that used than punish someone that did not.

This means not voting for Bonds, McGwire, Palmeiro, Sosa and Clemens. Most others should probably get considered.

I also think that this would be a less contentious issue if the baseball writers that vote were not so publicly sanctimonious after so obviously missing the issue.