HYPOCRITICAL HALL

Should sports writers really edit out the parts of baseball that excited fans?

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER BEING completely heartbroken in the summer of 1994. The Yankees and the Expos had the best records in their respective leagues and were on a seemingly inevitable collision course in the World Series. My all-time favorite Yankee, DON MATTINGLY, would fi nally make the post season and potentially carry them to a title. That all came crashing down on August 12, 1994, when a strike wiped out the rest of the season and left Major League Baseball without a World Series champion for the fi rst time since 1904. I was devastated.

As the strike spilled into the 1995 season, fan outrage was at an all-time high. On April 2, the strike fi nally ended. An abbreviated spring training led to a 144-game season. Opening day arrived with protests and boos across all major league stadiums. It was a season full of strife and raw nerves from the legion of fans who felt let down by the millionaires playing the sport fans loved. September brought baseball back into the national spotlight as CAL RIPKEN JR. eclipsed LOU GEHRIG’s consecutive games streak. The Braves went on to win the World Series, but MLB was facing an identity crisis. Another interesting thing happened in 1995—ALBERT BELLE led the league with 50 home runs.

By the time the ’96 season rolled in one thing was clear in Spring Training: Players were bigger than ever. The Yankees won their fi rst World Series in almost 20 years, but the viewers became more obsessed with the long ball. MARK MCGWIRE mashed 52 home runs to lead the league. KEN CAMINITI was larger than life in winning the MVP, hitting 140 RBIs. ANDRES GALARAGGA hit 47 home runs... Something was happening. Home runs were fl ying out at a record pace, and viewership was up.

We were in a new era of offensive dominance. The era of the power bats had us all on the edge of our seats. In 1998 MARK MCGWIRE and SAMMY SOSA captivated America in their pursuit of ROGER MARIS’ fabled 61 home runs. Crowds and viewership were at near record highs. Baseball was more popular than ever. On the backs of this home run race, America’s Pastime was back.

Right now 20+ years later, you hear all sorts of angry, fi nger-wagging rhetoric about how BONDS, CLEMENS, McGwire, Sosa, and AROD ruined a whole era of baseball. When in reality, they saved it. The game was on the brink of fi nancial disaster. Ratings were down, fewer fans were in the stadium. The summer of ’98 re-invigorated the fan base and the ownership and the commissioner’s offi ce turned a blind eye as to how it was happening. There was no testing for PEDs. Zero. In fact Bonds, Clemens, and McGwire never failed an offi cial test. Yet the hypocritical writers whose votes determine who enters the Hall of Fame have left each of these worthy entrants off their ballots. They sit there on their writing high horses after they all benefi ted from the attention power bats generated. I for one think all of those players should be in. You can’t write the history of baseball without those fi ve players. What they meant to the game in the era they played cannot be measured. In a way, they saved baseball, and the museum that honors baseball achievement should let these guys in.

The thing that annoys me the most about this is that the Commissioner who served over this era and benefi tted from the unrivaled growth while turning a blind eye to how these records were broken, BUD SELIG, is currently enshrined in the Hall of Fame yet so many of the players who contributed to this growth are perceived simply as cheaters and might never be inducted into the Hall of Fame. That level of hypocrisy simply does not sit well with me. —LV