Juicing the Hall: Let *Steroid users into the Hall of Fame

Did you ever think you would see the day?

If 10 years ago someone told you that a player who hit 583 career home runs would receive just 23.5 percent of votes in Hall of Fame balloting, you would have probably asked what they were smoking.

And yet this is the state of baseball today, the fallout from the intensive media coverage of and ruthless fan backlash towards the late 20th century period of power hitting that has been dubbed "The Steroid Era."

Any player even suspected of using a performance-enhancing drug is immediately treated like a baseball pariah, subjected to jeers, boos, and unrestrained calls for explanations for such inexcusable behavior.

And then there remains the issue of Hall of Fame voting, and which players from the Steroid Era should or should not be allowed into the Hall. Well I have a radical solution to that debate:

Let them in.

Ignore performance enhancing drug use as a factor for hall of fame consideration and just let players in on the basis of on the field performance alone.

I can just see you sitting at your computer, seething mad, grinding your teeth, and demanding I be sent to the electric chair. But at least let me defend myself before you call for my lethal injection.

First of all, steroid use in baseball has been proven not to be a string of isolated incidents, but rather a league-wide phenomenon that encompassed all Major League clubs and hundreds of Major League players.

The 1996 NL MVP Ken Caminiti estimated in a 2002 Sports Illustrated interview that 50 percent of Major Leaguers took steroids.

That is not meant to offer up an excuse for those players, but rather it has two consequent implications. First, since steroid use was so pervasive, it is very difficult to know for certain which players took steroids and which did not. This means that it is possible for star players from the era who have never been implicated in any of the scandals might still be users, but were just better at hiding it then their colleagues.

It is even possible for scrappy singles hitters to be steroid users; after all, the first ever player to be suspended by Major League baseball for using a banned substance was Alex Sanchez, who had all of four home runs in 1,351 at-bats at the time of his suspension.

If Alex Sanchez was taking performance-enhancing drugs, is it that unimaginable to think that players like Derek Jeter or Craig Biggio could have been users?

I'm not saying that Jeter or Biggio took any banned substances. What I am saying is that steroid use was so rampant during this time period, it's almost impossible to definitively conclude who was a user and who wasn't.

If you're picking and choosing players to vote in on the basis of assumed cleanliness, you still might be voting for a steroid user whom you never suspected, which is simply unfair to a player like Mark McGwire. 

If recent evidence has shown anything it's that it's not tainted players, but a tainted era, which brings me to my next point: to not admit potential steroid users into the Hall of Fame is to deny that this significant era of baseball history ever occurred.

Everyone knows baseball players took performance enhancing drugs, so to deny suspected or even proven users admission to the Hall of Fame is to deny that the steroid era even happened.

Players like McGwire, Sosa, Bonds and Palmiero had a huge impact on the game even if they took steroids, and they should be fairly admitted to the Hall of Fame to honor their contributions.

Yes, these players were probably steroid users, but they were in all likelihood sharing the batter's box with other steroid users and probably even facing some pitchers who were users. So how can their numbers be tainted by steroid use if they were achieved against other players who were also users?

The fact of the matter is that the Hall of Fame is meant to preserve baseball history and honor the baseball players who achieved ultimate fame and earned a permanent place in our memories. Will anyone who can remember 1998 ever forget the epic home run chase? Or will anyone ever forget Barry Bonds' remarkable stretch from 2001-2004? Does a better example of Hall of Fame worthy play even exist?

You may still want to put a noose around my neck. But if I were a sportswriter on the Hall of Fame panel, I'd vote for Mark McGwire every time.