Baseball's Hall of Fame is officially a joke now

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for David "Big Papi" Ortiz. He was a very gifted player; his stats are very good. A career WAR of 55.3 puts him 29th on the list of all-time great first basemen (which is where he played on the field, when he played on the field, which was not all that often). Behind many all-time greats, ahead of a few.

But Big Papi's career WAR of 55.3 pales besides the career WAR of 162.7 put up by Barry Bonds. Big Papi finished in the top 10 of MVP voting seven times; Bonds won the MVP award seven times. Big Papi finished with 541 career home runs, good for 17th place on the all-time list. Bonds, of course, is the all time home run leader, with 762.

David Ortiz got elected to the Hall of Fame yesterday -- the first time he was on the ballot. But Barry Bonds did not get elected to the Hall of Fame yesterday, on his 10th, and last, year of eligibility.

This makes no sense to me. None.

Also denied entry into the Hall of Fame yesterday, on his 10th and final time on the writers' ballot, was 354-game winner and seven-time Cy Young Award-winner Roger Clemens, the most dominant pitcher of his generation. Perhaps any generation. In 1986 he won the Cy Young and the MVP.

Oh, sure, you say. You know how to explain the difference between Ortiz, on the one hand, and Bonds and Clemens on the other: In a word, Steroids.

Except... David Ortiz tested positive for steroids in 2003. In a clear HIPAA violation, which to my knowledge was never investigated or prosecuted, the results of confidential steroid tests taken voluntarily by several players in 2003 (including Ortiz and his current Fox Sports studio partner Alex Rodriguez) were leaked to the press in 2009.

And, again, I'm not raining on Big Papi's parade. I'm happy he's in. In a piece this morning on Yahoo!sports, Hannah Keyser writes (and I agree),

None of this is to cast aspersions on Ortiz’s election. He played well into the current era of regular standardized drug testing and, after that survey testing in 2003, “I never failed a test,” as he said. “So what does that tell you?”

Bill Madden, in today's New York Daily News, does rain on Big Papi's parade:

In his 2018 book “Baseball Cop”, Eddie Dominguez, a high ranking Boston police detective and former FBI and DEA task member who was part of MLB’s since-abolished internal investigation unit, chronicled his three-year investigation of Big Papi and the Red Sox’s DH’s close association with an alleged Dominican drug dealer called “Monga,” who was in the U.S. illegally.

As part of the investigation of “Monga” and his involvement with PEDs, it was discovered that he was a frequent visitor to a Dominican barbershop in Boston with a gambling parlor in the basement, where witnesses said, he was placing large bets on Red Sox games in 2005. Just after Ortiz was presented with this information by MLB investigators, the barbershop abruptly closed. Dominguez reported that he was finally able to get “Monga” banned from the Red Sox clubhouse (where he’d been Ortiz’s constant companion), only to see him on TV, on the field at the 2006 All-Star Game Home Run Derby in Pittsburgh, toweling off Big Papi and the other Dominican players. When Dominguez voiced his outrage to his superiors at MLB, he was informed that Ortiz had told then-Commissioner Bud Selig and his deputy, [current Commissioner Rob] Manfred, that if “Monga” and his posse were not allowed on the field, he would not participate in the Home Run Derby. Not long after, “Monga” was arrested at Ortiz’s house, where he was staying, and deported for immigration violations.

But so what? People in New York are always hating on Boston players.

Besides, that's not the point.

The point, if you read Madden's linked column, is that he eliminated all the "PED cheats" from his ballot before making any selections.

Just like a significant number of his sportswriting brothers and sisters.

Sanctimonious hypocrites all.

Look, I lived through the Steroid Era. I remember. I remember the hype when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire both went for 60 home runs in a season. Baseball officially promoted the heck out of this. I remember the ad campaigns -- like "chicks dig the long ball." I remember Sosa showing up to Spring Training one year looking more like the Michelin Man than a baseball player and the sportswriters asking him where he got his new muscles. "Flinstones Vitamins," he said, and all the sportswriters guffawed.

But they knew. They knew then. José Canseco did not have to write his book for the sportswriters to know. Anybody with eyes could see how enormous Sosa had become, and Bonds, and others.

The writers didn't care. The owners didn't care. The sponsors didn't care. They celebrated home runs and the man-mountains that hit them. Because these behemoths brought the fans back to the National Pastime after the 1994 strike.

Look: I am not saying steroids are good. Or that they should be legal for players to take. Or that taking steroids wasn't cheating, even during the Steroid Era.

Obviously, taking steroids is bad. When not medically necessary, steroids are bad for the persons taking them. Looking the other way at steroid users was not fair to the persons who didn't take them, and who were forced out of baseball by walking chemistry experiments. It was, in fact, cheating.

So is throwing a spitball. And, yet, the most successful spitball pitcher of the modern era, Gaylord Perry is in the Hall of Fame. He never got caught -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- and, yet, somehow, everybody knew.

Baseball was never a gentleman's game. There has always been a notion in many sports, and in baseball in particular, that if you ain't cheatin' you ain't tryin'. Eventually, some things may be ruled beyond the pale. As has happened now with steroids. And that's all well and good.

But sportswriters should not pretend to be shocked or appalled or outraged or even a teensy bit upset about players accused of juicing during the Steroid Era, not when they were celebrated and admired and lauded and applauded even as they looked less and less like standard-issue humans. You might contend that some of the sportswriters having ballots now were not sportswriters then and this is undoubtedly so. But they should know, better than most, that their predecessors ignored or at least winked at steroid usage until MLB finally decided to clamp down for real.

The bottom line is this: You have this museum supposedly honoring the greatest players ever to play baseball -- and then you deny entry to baseball's greatest players because maybe they juiced. Oh... and maybe they were jerks, too, especially to the writers. If this is the standard, let's change the name from Hall of Fame to Hall of Sportswriters' Favorites.

And one more thing. What with FanDuel and DraftKings and every casino and sportsbook in the nation having official sponsorship deals with MLB or MLB teams... does it make any sense to still keep Pete Rose out? How about Joe Jackson?

No... it doesn't.

Today, the Hall of Fame is a farce, now more than ever. That doesn't mean Big Papi isn't a Hall of Famer. He is. And was, before yesterday's votes were announced. But so is Barry Bonds. And Roger Clemens. And Joe Jackson (who, even if his share of the gamblers' money was left on his hotel bed, never did one thing to hurt the White Sox in the 1919 World Series). And even Pete Rose, who bet on baseball before it was permitted. Put 'em all in the Hall. Put asterisks on their plaques if you must. But tell the whole story. Or close the Hall down.