Hall of Fame Does Not Get It: Mark McGwire Belongs

The day was September 8th, 1998. It was my first week back to school so my mom’s agenda was making sure that I was tucked away in bed to get a proper rest for the following school day. Our priorities severely differed that night.

I began to follow the game of baseball at one of the most exciting times in the history of the game. All fans alike were in the midst of an outstanding race between St. Louis Cardinals OF Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs OF Sammy Sosa for one of the most cherished records in all of professional sports.

For 37 years, former New York Yankee Roger Maris held the record for homeruns in a season.
          
However, on this night, that would change.
          
When McGwire hit his 62nd homerun of the 1998 season, breaking Maris’ record of 61, it was certain that he would be a future hall-of-famer.
          
Even after a poor hitting season, in which he retired, in 2001, there was little, if any, doubt that McGwire would be a first-ballot guarantee to reach the Hall-of-Fame.
          
After all, his career numbers were astounding.
          
McGwire hit a whopping 583 homeruns during his time in the major leagues, placing him eighth on the all-time list. His large variety of dingers were accompanied by 1414 RBIs, a career .394 OBP, seven 100+ RBI seasons, 12 30+ homerun seasons, and 11 All-Star selections.
          
The only blemish on McGwire’s career stats sheet lies in a characteristically low batting average, a common trait of power hitters.
          
McGwire, also known as Big Mac or Mac, hit only .263 in his 16-year-career in the majors.
         
Despite the 11 All Star selections, Big Mac also never won an MVP award.
          
The former Oakland Athletic and St. Louis Cardinal will go down as being one of the greatest Major Leaguers players to never win an MVP award.
          
Even in his most dominant season in 1998, where he became the first player to hit 70 homeruns in a season, McGwire was edged out of the race by Sosa.
          
But, in retrospect, it’s not the batting average or the MVPs keeping this hero from reaching baseball heavenly shrine.
          
The Problem: McGwire was the beginning of an unfortunate era.
          
The Steroid Era.
           
In 1998, during the renowned chase for 62, a reporter from the Associated Press (AP) discovered a brown bottle labeled ‘Androstenedione’ in Big Mac’s locker.   

McGwire, in his first full season with the St. Louis Cardinals, admitted to using the substance, which, at the time, was legal to use in the Major Leagues, but, not in the NFL or the Olympics.
          
This over-the-counter drug, often referred to as ‘Andro’, has similar side-effects as anabolic steroids.
          
Andro is precursor to the male hormone, testosterone. The raised levels of testosterone are used to help rapidly increase muscle tissue and ultimately created higher levels of muscle mass.
          
What is the difference between Andro and steroids?
          
Steroids allow the user to inject as much testosterone as desired into the body which can ultimately cause harmful side effects to those users. 
          
One of Andro’s most drastic side effects is the fact that it doesn’t always produce testosterone.
           
Rather than filling the body with testosterone, studies have shown that some Andro users are instead pumped full of the female hormone, estrogen. In lieu of creating muscle like its male counterpart, estrogen will produce mammitary tissue, or breasts, on the male body.
          
Imagine McGwire with a chest like….never mind.
          
Let’s also remember that it’s not just the consumption of Andro that makes voters wary of voting Mac on their hall-of-fame ballots.
           
On March 17th, 2005, McGwire seemed sick to his stomach at a Congressional hearing regarding steroids in baseball.
           
Big Mac refused to answer any questions regarding his use of any supplements or steroids other than Andro, leaving doubters very suspicious.           

Fair Enough. McGwire didn’t want to convict himself. Can you blame him?\

After all, isn’t it the right of all Americans to be able to plead The Fifth Amendment and not convict one self?
          
Sure it might have been better to tell the truth, but, at least he didn’t lie. Things would have been worse for McGwire if he lied and was later caught (see Rafael Palmerio and the infamous finger pointing).
           
Seeing as using performance enhancing drugs was more of an ethical debate than an actual rule during McGwire’s career, let’s forget that aspect of the debate for a moment.
          
Did McGwire’s career numbers really show that he was hall-of-fame worthy?
          
After all, McGwire’s career .263 batting average seems to be a little bit lacking for a hall of famer…right?
          
Consider the fact that Cal Ripken Jr., also a first year candidate on last year’s ballot, hit just .275 during his career. Sure, he’s ‘The Iron Man’, and he deserves to be remembered for starting each of those 2632 games in a row, and much more. But is that accomplishment equal to McGwire’s magical 1998 season that had every reporter in America salivating at the mouth? And does those extra 12 batting points make him so superior to McGwire?
          
If elected to the Hall, McGwire wouldn’t even have the worst hall-of-fame average among first basemen.

Harmon Killebrew, who played for the Washington Senators, Minnesota Twins, and Kansas City Royals, had a career batting average of .256. Killebrew had ten less homeruns than McGwire while appearing in an additional seven seasons.                     
          
Killebrew was elected to the hall-of-fame in 1984.
          
In 1991, while playing with the Oakland Athletics, McGwire hit just .201 in a season.
          
How can someone who once hit .201 in a season make it to the hall-of-fame? 
          
Honestly, this stat looked much worse on paper than it did in reality. After all, there had to be a reason why Tony La Russa, McGwire’s manager at the time, didn’t banish McGwire from the starting lineup. That year, McGwire had an adjusted OPS (OPS+) of 102, which is two points above the league average of 100.
 
This means that despite his low batting average, McGwire was still able to produce a better combination of power and on-base-percentage than the average hitter that year.
          
McGwire’s batting average might not have always been high, but he didn’t struggle to get on base, nor to produce offensively.
          
In Bill James book entitled What Happened to the Hall of Fame?, James created a system called the Hall-of-Fame Monitor in which hitters are assessed points based on many categories of hitting. This system is used to measure how hall-of-fame worthy a candidate is regardless of the politics involving the candidates.
          
Using the Hall-of-Fame Monitor, McGwire scores 169 points. James notes that 130 points is generally a lock for a player to reach the Hall-of-Fame. Using this system, McGwire exceeds totals of HOF members like Al Kaline, Kirby Pucket, and Brooks Robinson.
          
What about McGwire’s defense?
            
Let’s compare with the other elected first basemen in the hall-of-fame.
          
With a .993 fielding percentage, McGwire had a higher percentage at the first base position than the following hall-of-fame first basemen: Cap Anson (.974), Jake Beckley (.981), Jim Bottomley (.988), Dan Brouthers (.971), Orlando Cepeda (.990), Frank Chance (.987), Roger Connor (.978), Jimmie Foxx (.992), Lou Gehrig (.991), Hank Greenberg (.991), George Kelley (.992), Harmon Killebrew (.992), Willie McCovey (.987), Johnny Mize (.992), Tony Perez (.992), George Sisler (.987), and Bill Terry (.992).  The only other hall of fame first basemen is Eddie Murray, who shared a .993 fielding percentage with McGwire.
          
McGwire wasn’t the best first baseman of the group, but he was the most efficient.

As per mentioned, McGwire also never won an MVP award.

No Problem.
          
Bill Mazeroski was elected into the hall-of-fame in 2001 despite never winning a regular season MVP award.
            
McGwire made a name for himself after the 1994 strike.         

In the seven year period from the1994 strike season and his 2001 retirement, McGwire hit 61% of his career homeruns, topped off by consecutive seasons with 65+ homeruns during the 1998 and 1999 seasons.

Mac’s inflated stats from his 31st birthday in 2001 to the end of his career leave writers and fans very perturbed, and make it very easy to associate those stats with steroid use.

Ironically, Tony Gwynn, who also retired in 2001 and appeared on the ballot for the first time last year with McGwire, had an alarming increase in his numbers in that same period ranging 1994-2001. Gwynn, who never had more than 72 RBIs in a year after the 1994 season, recorded 90 RBIs in 1995 and 119 RBIs in 1997.

Between 1994 and 1999, Gwynn hit 67 of his 135 career homeruns.

The 67 homeruns from age 34 to 39 meant that Gwynn hit about 50% of his career homeruns in just 25% of the seasons in which he played. At 34 years old, Gwynn began playing the best baseball of his career. At 37 he set a career high in homeruns and RBIs.           

So does this mean that Tony Gwynn did steroids?           

I’m not suggesting it, but, if you’re going to punish McGwire by not voting him in due to the inflation of his stats post 1994 and the suspicion of using steroids, then how does Tony Gwynn, a man who showed the same drastic, late career surge as McGwire, deserve 97.6% of the writer’s votes?

After all, fair is fair.           

That night of Sept 8th, 1998, my mom had won the battle, but I won the war. Shortly after being banished to my bed for the night, my grandfather called to make sure that I was up to see the replay of the most remarkable homerun of my era, number 62.

McGwire defined an era.

He saved baseball from the villain known as the 1994 baseball strike. He won the hearts of the women, children, and men of America alike. He brought us back to the game. And, instead of embracing the man for a great career, we have made him the whipping boy of the Steroid Era, punishing him unfairly while other players of the era are elected to the hall-of-fame.

McGwire was once baseball’s Superman.

It’s amazing how quickly things can change.