The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is barren of
two obvious members who should be enshrined there except for some off-field
shenanigans that we can’t forget. The question now is whether in the near
future will there be several more players who should be there but won’t.
Yes, I’m talking
about Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and some guy named Barry Bonds.
Will they, like
Pete Rose and Shoeless Shoe Jackson, be left lingering on the outskirts, so
near yet so far away?
I have been asked
a lot lately whether I will vote for Bonds for the Hall of Fame. I’ve had a
vote for the Hall of Fame since 1986 and as a lifetime honorary member of the
Baseball Writers Association of America, will have that vote until my ballot
goes unanswered and somebody close to me writes, “Deceased” across it. If that
doesn’t happened before Bonds is eligible for election – players are eligible
five years after they retired from the game – I will get to cast my vote for
the man who now is the all-time career home run king.
If I had to vote
today, my answer would be the same as it was for McGwire for this year’s vote –
no.
Palmeiro and Sosa
will get the same from me when they become eligible ... unless the situation
changes in the coming years.
The good thing
about having a vote is that you have five years after a player retires to make
up your mind, if there is an shred of doubt. And there’s plenty with the people
mentioned above.
Let’s take Bonds.
He is on his best days hard to like. He is insufferable. Writers are lower than
the lowest form of living creatures. And he treats them accordingly. So when it
comes to these same writers having a chance to have the upper hand with him –
as they do when it comes to the Hall of Fame vote – it’s difficult for them not
to respond back in kind, and not vote for him, at least on the first ballot. And,
make no mistake, a lot of people will do just that.
I will withhold my
vote on that first ballot – unless things change in the intervening years – not
for his treatment of fellow scribes,
but because I believe like many others that he used substances to increase his
performance.
The sad thing is
that he didn’t have to do that. He was a Hall of Fame guy before he allegedly
began “using,” which most people put after the 1998 season, but which may have
come a year later. I know in 1999 that Bonds, 35 at the time and right at about
the age when experts say players start to go downhill, was in decline as a
player and a debate within baseball was being held who was the best player in
the game – Bonds or Ken Griffey Jr. My thought at the time was that Griffey was
on the rise and Bonds was in decline and that Griffey was then the best player
in the game.
Bonds was
declaring himself the best left fielder in the game, yet as the Major League
official scorer for the game, I gave him an error that year when he misjudged a
routine fly ball that even I could have caught.
Interestingly,
several years previously my sports editor had given me the impossible task of
getting a personal interview with Bonds. I surprised the editor and everybody
else who knew of the task by visiting him in the clubhouse before a game and
sitting with him one-on-one for 45 minutes. He was very generous, very nice, as
we talked about his divorce, his life, the black-and-white issue, his
tumultuous relationship with the media, and baseball in general.
I came away from
that interview thinking this guy isn’t so bad. But I since have been told I was
lucky. That he could have just as well have bitten my head off and treated me
worse than those low-life creatures mentioned above.
But that’s Barry.
He lives in his own world, a world which he creates himself and only he decides
if it’s worth it to let you live in it.
Being a human
being who is often despicable does not disqualify him from membership into
Cooperstown. If it did, Ty Cobb and others would not be members.
Randy Johnson most
often was a surly guy who scared away even the biggest flies. Most writers
avoided Randy as often as their job would allow. If somebody tested the waters
with Randy and survived the test, others would quickly jump in to get what
comments they could from him while the going was good. Often Randy talked in
circles, contradicting himself time after time, but that was OK because it was
so rare for Randy to be accommodating that nobody cared.
A month or so
before the Mariners traded him to Houston, Randy was in a rare good mood before
the game and as he sat in the home dugout he suddenly turned to me with this
big smile and said, “I’ve been around here for eight and half years and I don’t
even know your name.”
“That’s OK,” I
said. “I want it that way.”
I wasn’t smiling
when I said it. He had jerked too many of us around for too long for me not to
dislike what he had done. So he didn’t need to know my name.
The bottom line is
that when I come to vote for Bonds or Randy I will discount them being jerks.
They weren’t being paid for their ugly personalities, so I don’t hold that
against them when it comes to the Hall of Fame. I will vote Randy on the first
ballot, but I still won’t for Bonds, and the difference is the questions about
his use of substances to increase his performance. I will make him pay, only if
it is for one year, maybe two, if he doesn’t make the Hall on the first ballot
without my vote.
Bonds deserves to
be in the Hall. I’m not sure about McGwire, because what would he have been
like without being a user, which he probably was. Same with Sosa and Palmerio.
But I have time still to rethink my position on them. But my position on Bonds
is he belongs in Cooperstown, as long as in the next few years baseball doesn’t
disqualify him for new revelations, just as it did with Rose and Shoeless Joe.
It’s too bad that
all of us – including Randy and Barry – aren’t like Edgar Martinez. He is a
sweetheart of a guy, and was a sweetheart of a baseball player. He’s the best
right-handed hitter I’ve even seen. When he got it going, he could dismantle
pitchers with ridiculous ease. And in the clubhouse or off the field, Edgar was
the greatest.
There are voters
who will claim that Edgar doesn’t belong in the Hall because he was a
designated hitter for much of his career. But as time goes on, I think some of
those voters have come to realize they watched one of the great hitters of all
time and will likely shift their vote to yes for Edgar.
In the meantime,
baseball continues to investigate the use of performance enhancement by players
and sometime down the road it may all explode on Bonds. If it does, Bonds may
be in trouble among Hall voters.
But for now, Bonds
belongs in the Hall.
Just not on the
first ballot.
Have a great
month.
You are loved.