PEDs in Sports: Why Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens Should Be in the Hall of Fame

We don’t know. We can’t know. There is no test. 

It could be everybody. It could be nobody.

The only fair thing to do is to take any substance you can’t test for off the banned substance list. You can’t police what you can’t catch. 

And really, who’s going to care? The fans want to see bone-crunching hits, home-runs, power-dunks, and hat-tricks. We pretend we care, but we don’t. The only people you’re going to piss off by doing this are those in Congress. 

And let’s be honest, if Congress were really serious about cleaning up sports, they’d make the laws against using these substances more stringent. We all know they’re not serious—they just like seeing their faces on ESPN. But if they were, that’s what they’d do.

If you catch someone using HGH, steroids, etc. illegally, throw them in jail. If an athlete is taking something illegal that can’t be tested for, the only way you’re catching him is if he’s involved in a criminal investigation anyway. Until someone develops a test, let the law deal with them. 

You can’t hit home-runs from jail.

Anyway, the reason this argument keeps coming up is because Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will both be due for a Hall of Fame vote in five years (unless they come back to play again, which I don’t see happening). After much deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that I firmly believe both should be in the Hall of Fame. 

They were the best of their generation. Yes, they both probably used PEDs.  But then, as far as you know, so did everyone they played against.  

I’ve heard some people ask how many home-runs Bonds would have had if he hadn’t used PEDs. Couldn’t you also ask how many home-runs he would have had if the opposing pitcher wasn’t using them as well?  Or how many home-runs did Clemens give up because the opposing batter was using PEDs? 

It all evens out, probably. Or maybe not. But we don’t know.

So, to sum this up: PEDs are cheating, players who use are scum and should be treated as such, but PEDs shouldn’t be banned if we can’t test for them. 

And Barry and Roger should both be first ballot Hall-of-Famers, unless you have a way of proving to me that everyone else in baseball wasn’t using PEDs as well.

And, as always, Congress sucks.

Sean Crowe is a Senior Writer and an NFL Community Leader at Bleacher Report. You can email him at scrowe@gmail.com. His archive can be found here. You can find everything he writes, including articles for other publications, here.

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