Hall of Fame voters: The Steroid-use Wall begins to crumble

It happened once again. I wasn’t sure it would, but once again Baseball Hall of Fame voters refused to give Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens the 75 percent needed for their enshrinement. It was both players’ last year to be voted in by the regular Hall method.

The election of David Ortiz, “the first player to enter the Hall of Fame who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during his playing days,” seemed almost an afterthought if one monitored some MSM coverage immediately after the final tallies from the Hall of Fame voters.

We’ll return to that in a moment.

First, though, Bonds has an argument as the greatest player who ever lived; Clemens has an argument as the best or second-best pitcher of the past 50 years. They also both have an argument based on Whataboutism because…Ortiz. And Whataboutism is no longer a fallacy of relevance.

Shortly before the vote was tallied, some voters posted their ballots on social media. A very unofficial impression I got was that the Hall of Fame voters willing to “go public” in this way favored giving Bonds and Clemens a break in their tenth year. Of course, both are known, high-profile, PED cheaters.

In fact, shortly before the vote was announced Jan. 25 the MLB Network tweeted that “known ballots” would have put Ortiz, Clemens, and Bonds all into Cooperstown. However, both Bonds and Clemens fell off about 10 percent after the remaining, secret ballots were counted.

Some suggested articulately that the vote highlighted hypocrisy because, again…Ortiz. Certainly, that term is not wildly wrong. Never mind that, in 2016, MLB Commissioner Manfred cast doubt on the reliability of “the round of testing” involving Ortiz that had been done 13 years earlier. That smacks terribly of MLB wanting to have its cake (to identify PED users) and eat it too (to damn those users selectively).

However, what is undeniable is that at least three out of five Hall of Fame voters are now  willing to look the other way for the most dominant players, no matter how aggressively dishonest they may have been, and no matter how credible the documentation of their PED use. When three voters become four, the debate is over.

So, as expected, the Steroid-use Wall is starting to come down. But it’s still there. That some crumbling is happening is seen by some fans as a matter of “growing up.”

That point of view, though, was nothing compared to the orgy of staged outrage that erupted on two cable news stations the morning of Jan. 26. Both “Morning Joe” and “The John Berman Show” on MSNBC and CNN, respectively, featured commentary lamenting the exclusion of Barry and Roger.

In fairness, it should be noted that CNN also included former Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan, who didn’t quite do any lamenting.

On “Morning Joe,” though, you had a veritable opera on the theme of “telling the story of the game,” as in: That story must somehow include Bonds, Clemens, and other reprobates. Outraged commentators wailed about the character clause Hall of Fame voters allegedly consider – but at no great length – and that was merciful.

Seemingly, a lot of people want to forget that extended cheating by some Steroid Era players is very arguably worse than betting on specific games, or even throwing a World Series. Records were rendered meaningless, and medical danger stalked baseball for years as a result of it.

But hey, it’s just a game, and maybe a couple of these guys did get into fights or smacked girlfriends around because of chemically induced rages. Whatever. Time to grow up.

How about an annex in Cooperstown for the reprobates? Put ‘em all in – Barry, Roger, Manny, Pete, and Shoeless – don’t forget Joe, please.

This annex should look like a detached garage at the end of a suburban driveway. Oh, and make the Hall of Fame voters build it.