Steroids or Not, Put Them All In the Hall

I did not think I would ever get to this point, but I am there, I really do not care if Alex Rodriguez took steroids. At this point, I do not care if these people took steroids.

I am not saying what they did was right, I am absolutely 100 percent against steroid-use in baseball. However, we will never know who all the guilty parties were and we never will. There is no point for us to do a witch hunt anymore, mix and match random people, and when we find guys, strike them down, bash them, and trash them.

The fact of the matter is there were 103 other players that tested positive just like Alex Rodriguez. I doubt we will see anybody on that list that is a bigger player than Alex Rodriguez.

Before last week, many people anointed him as one of the best right-handed hitters of all-time. Still, why does A-Rod deserve the scorn while the other 103 may never be revealed?

As a member of the Bleacher Report,  I was given an e-mail last week to pick my favorite team and think of five players on that team that potentially took steroids? Are you kidding me? Is that what it has really come to?

What spurned this article was the thought of Alex Rodriguez in the Hall of Fame. Some feel that he should be out, some in. I want him in. I want Bonds in. I want Clemens in.

Talk to me three weeks ago and I would not have wanted Bonds or Clemens, or Miguel Tejada or anybody that has been so closely associated with steroids in the Hall of Fame. However, after finding out that our crown jewel Alex Rodriguez was in there, I’ve given up. A-Rod was always the guy I looked to and said, “Well at least A-Rod can take Bonds’ record from him.”

Now, there is nothing. Now, we have nothing. We have Pujols, I guess, but I am not putting stock into anybody anymore.

So why do I want an admitted steroid-user in the Hall? It is going to happen. If it’s not Alex Rodriguez, it’ll be Jeff Bagwell in 2011 or Edgar Martinez. Who knows? The next 10-15 years of Hall of Fame voting is going to be so littered with potential steroid users how can you limit certain guys? How do you nitpick A-Rod because he tested in 2003, but allow Bagwell who lasted 10 years in the league and was basically a non-factor in 2003? How do we nitpick like that? It is impossible.

Let the great players of the era in. If Bonds has the numbers let him in. One condition let everyone know that this was the steroid era. Have a different colored plague, have its own section, its own wing, whatever. Much as people can look to pre-1940s baseball as segregated age and the 1970s as the amphetamines or greenies age, we have to look at the late 80s-90s as the steroid era.

It is sad it has come to this, but it is necessary. Let us take the steps to get steroids out of baseball, let us get testing, huge fines, huge suspensions and move on, but there is no point in trying to strike down the past.

Bud and Donald let the MLB players run wild and it happened, there is nothing we can do to take it back.

Rich Kraetsch

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