Ask Doug: Hall of Fame?
Baseball Factory
July 31, 2009
By Doug Glanville
Doug Glanville is working with the Baseball Factory and Team One Baseball as a Special Consultant. He will be writing articles and looking for your questions and feedback. If you have a question for Doug, please email him at askdoug@baseballfactory.com
Q: A story came out earlier this year claiming that Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids in 2003. Do you think he is a hall of famer? What about the rest of the players that have tested positive? What about the players that are assumed to have used steroids, but never tested positive? Where do you draw the line? Do you think the current steroid policy is helping the game move in the right direction?
A: Maybe one day I will have a vote for the Hall of Fame if I keep up my writing. I would not vote for any player who used steroids or “PEDs.” I can recognize that a lot of these players were already talented but it is an advantage and there were other players who were playing it straight. You last in this game by keeping up with your competition and when you competition is tilting factors in their favor, it creates problems with fairness. Sosa and other users benefited economically, maybe won championships, set records… so they enjoyed a lot of good treasures from their drug use, so the greatest honor a player can have should not have to add another reward on top of it by giving them a pass to the Hall. I don’t like how some of these names were revealed especially from a test that was supposed to be confidential, but most of the players that are getting revealed are players who publicly declared that they were drug free. If they just stayed humble and moved on, maybe they wouldn’t have gotten called out. Clemens, Bonds, Manny, Tejada, ARod, etc. It is a sad list.
We may never get the entire truth about the extent of the drug culture in baseball, but I think the new policy has some teeth in it. It is helping a lot, but it is a constant issue. One drug will be replaced by another one, so we have to keep improving and keep having high standards.
Republished by The Baseball Factory
