By Mike Rifkin
One of the days I look forward to is the announcement of who gets inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The game’s highest honor is to be among the all-time greats on a July day in Cooperstown, New York. As I got older, the day means more because now we are in the midst of players I watched as a kid, and I find it pretty cool that these guys I grew up watching are now Hall of Famers. The Hall of Fame always brings in great debate whether people feel an individual player belongs or not. On Tuesday, The HOF committee announced that no player would be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. The closest individual to receiving the 75% needed for induction was Curt Schilling, who was 16 votes shy.
Next year is the tenth and final year of two notable players Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Bonds, who is the all-time home run leader, is believed to have used steroids to boost his power, same with Clemens. People need to realize that the steroid era happened and is a part of baseball history.
I get the stand against Schilling for his politics and against Bonds and Clemens for their possible PED use. Next year the final year of Bonds and Clemens will also be the first year of two other intriguing candidates David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez. Ortiz, who is considered by some to be the greatest designated hitter of all time, was a 10-time All-Star and three-time World Series Champion and in 2013 was World Series MVP.
Ortiz had 541 home runs in his career. In 2004 He was named ALCS MVP when the Boston Red Sox became the first team in MLB history to come back from a 3-0 series deficit against the arch-rival New York Yankees. In 2003 Ortiz was named in the Mitchell report, which had over 100 players’ names saying all of these players had taken PED’S. Ortiz denied the allegations against him and never tested positive for steroids.
A-Rod was a three-time AL MVP; World Series champion hit 696 home runs. But Alex has some terrible things that hurt his on the field production. In 2009 he admitted to taking steroids from 2001-2003, winning MVP one of those years. In 2014 he was involved in another steroid scandal and was suspended for the entire season.
Now I understand why you don’t vote for Schilling for his politics. I get not voting for Bonds and Clemens. But if you have those thoughts on A-Rod and Ortiz, they cannot receive their vote either. I would vote Ortiz in, and eventually, the steroid era has to be acknowledged because it did happen.
They say that going into the Hall of Fame is a prestigious honor, but something that upset me the other day was that 14 voters sent in blank ballots meaning they didn’t vote for a player. But here is my issue with that if you are a writer and genuinely believe that someone belongs, make the case. Even if they don’t get the 5% needed to stay on the ballot, try to convince people that a player deserves at least more time to be considered. If you don’t want to vote for a single-player, then why do you have a vote?
Writers cannot tell fans that nobody on the current ballot deserves to be in the Hall. Why are writers punishing guys who may have played in the era but never were associated with steroid use, Can’t be punishing guys just because you don’t know who did what? If you want to hold players accountable, which they should, fans should hold the writers accountable on why they did or didn’t vote for a particular player; otherwise, the Hall becomes a very tricky situation.
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