Making A Statement.

by
December 31, 2012

I am in possession of the toxic ballot. It’s not just the sight of performance-enhancing drugs, but the aroma of them, perhaps even our fear of them. My heart and head are engaged in a civil war. Those are the handcuffs I wear in filling out the ballot. Innocent until proven guilty, no matter how guilty he looks. That’s the way I’m going. I almost surely will vote for him… just not this year. I might change my mind someday. I have before. Time has a way of revealing the truth and shedding light on right and wrong and the reasons between the two. Doesn’t mean I will next year. Doesn’t mean I will in five years. It just means that my own internal debate continues, and if I sound indecisive, so be it. This is not an easy question to decide. Maybe time will help voters gain a better perspective on the steroid era. But for now, I’d feel dirty. I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t my mess to solve, and I wouldn’t be qualified to solve it even if it were. I’ve got an admittedly subjective, obviously independent way to vote: I decide my own damn self on a case by case basis if each individual qualifies for my own definition of Cooperstown worthiness. I believe PED use was part of a particular era of the game and the Hall of Fame should reflect those times. The place is a museum, after all. Yes, I am very uncomfortable submitting some of these names. I am choosing to speak loudly by using silence. This is my way of expressing my anger to baseball. Angry that the powers-that-be turned their backs while this was going on. Angry that it took us so long to shine light on it. The biggest dilemma I have from a numbers standpoint is that if some players’ numbers are artificially inflated and others are not, aren’t the honest ones paying a huge price for showing outstanding integrity, sportsmanship, and character? Remove those three words and the Hall of Fame becomes a museum with the game’s greatest players and nothing more, which is exactly what it should be. This one-year protest should make my point.





 

Jeremy Blachman is the author of Anonymous Lawyer, a satirical novel that should make people who didn't go to law school feel good about their life choices. Read more at McSweeney's or elsewhere. He likes e-mail.

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rubesandbabes
11 years ago

The very last sentence is the essence of the voters dilemma. In the past, the Barry Larkin votes of 2012, would the next year become the Jack Morris votes of 2013. But the PED era interrupts the pageant because it forces the voters to 1) have a new reason to not vote for someone whose criteria worked under the old scheme, and 2) pretty much compels voters to take a stance on PEDs that won’t be so easy to walk away from in two years.

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Buried somewhere in this is the confusing idea that if Adam Dunn and Giancarlo Stanton were on the “Cream and the Clear” in 2013, they would be hitting the 60 home runs. (Okay, maybe not Dunn.)

The “Classic PED Era” ballplayers increased their baseball abilities to beyond the current level of play, and no one wants to touch this aspect of the question.

These Bonds/Sosa seasons cannot be contextualized against other eras (sorry, JAWS and WAR fans), nor even within their own epoch without sorta buying into the idea that ‘everyone was doing it back then,’ which is not so.

Oh, and the PED era is still going on. If you found it okay for the 2012 NL batting champion Melky Cabrera to have his mom write him a note excusing him from the award, that’s good – it will go down that much easier the next time it happens…

Happy New Year Everyone!
Free Lance Armstrong!

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