OK, Major League Baseball veterans committee. The ball is, literally, in your court. Time to do the right thing.
If you’re going to open the door and welcome in Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe to the Hall of Fame, hold it open just a tad longer for the more modern disgraced titans who’ve also been barricaded from entry.
Let the steroid users, admitted or otherwise, finally get their deserved enshrinement. Allow shamed superstars Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Rogers Clemens, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and all the other juicers who blew up their bodies with anabolic steroids to have their moment.
It might not be the popular move. It surely won’t be applauded by all. You might even need to shower with a Brillo pad just to get the sludge off.
But the fair and correct decision would be allowing the Mitchell Report culprits to follow Rose’s path into baseball immortality.
Also, kudos to you if you make this decision before any of them die.
With all the spine of a jellyfish and none of Charlie's hustle, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced Tuesday in a statement that Rose would finally, posthumously be removed baseball’s permanently banned list, not even one full year after Rose's death from natural causes.
The “policy decision,” as it was described in the statement, makes Rose and some others eligible for entry into Cooperstown.
The cowardly Manfred also explained that Rose’s removal from the banned list was, like, actually never even really a thing until an application filed by Rose’s family required the commissioner to suddenly, out of nowhere, reconsider Rose's status.
The whole statement came off so tone-deaf, so out of touch, so disingenuous, it left you wondering if Manfred was preparing to run for office.
The commish concluded that Rose’s death meant he could no longer harm the game’s reputation – right, because, he’s dead – and that Rose’s banishment was no long necessary to demonstrate the dire consequences of gambling on baseball while you’re playing or managing it.
Seriously, the statement actually said this. Here you go:
“In my view, a determination must be made regarding how the phrase ‘permanently ineligible’ should be interpreted in light of the purposes and policies behind Rule 21, which are to: (1) protect the game from individuals who pose a risk to the integrity of the sport by prohibiting the participation of such individuals; and (2) create a deterrent effect that reduces the likelihood of future violations by others. In my view, once an individual has passed away, the purposes of Rule 21 have been served. Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game. [MLB]
In perhaps be the most insincere sentiment of all time, the statement made sure to point out that Major League Baseball itself never actually banned Rose from the Hall – wink, wink – because, hey, it was the Hall’s decision in 1991 to legislate permanently banned players from entering their hallowed grounds, and of course, the Hall is a completely separate entity from MLB.
Get that, folks? It’s not Major League Baseball’s fault that Rose never made the Hall … it’s the Hall’s fault!
If there was a Hall of Fame for passing the buck, Manfred would get in first ballot.
Anyway, Rose will probably get in through his last remaining vehicle – the 16-person veteran’s committee consisting of baseball Hall of Famers, executives and media. The committee can grant a second chance to a player who never garnered enough votes from the writers during his time on the ballot.
When the committee officially votes to induct Rose, it needs to then leave the door open for the steroid users – another batch of imperfect, self-absorbed men who cheated the game, and themselves, but left far too massive of an imprint to simply pretend their achievements aren’t historically elite.
You can’t tell the history of the game without the great “Roger Maris Chase” of 1998, when McGwire eclipsed Maris’ longstanding record of 61 homers in a season by swatting his 62nd homer at Busch Stadium in St. Louis against the Cubs while Sosa, pursuing the same record at 60 dingers, admired from the outfield.
You can’t talk about the sport's greatest flamethrowers without including Clemens, who won his MLB-record seventh Cy Young at 41, appearing twice the size and much scruffier than the 21-year-old version who won his first Cy Young.
You can’t convince me that Barry Bonds, a Hall of Fame misanthrope, wasn’t already bound for Cooperstown way before he creamed and cleared his lithe frame into something resembling a Marvel comic superhero (or supervillain, for those outside the Bay Area).
The notion that shunning A-Rod, one of the most obnoxiously self-absorbed athletes in the history of all sports, has penalized him in the court of public opinion sure seems at odds with the fact that Rodriguez has since appeared in a favorable light on nearly every major TV network, including non-baseball programming such as “Shark Tank.”
Rose might’ve been a near-perfect ball player, but he was hardly a model citizen, and neither were many of the 1990s and 2000s baseball superstars receiving mysterious packages in the mail or finding discrete locations for an injection.
But you can’t usher in Rose – who still has a legion of support from fans and former teammates – and continue to deny entry of a group of players who, quite frankly, were even more elite.
Twenty years ago, I stood on the opposite side of this debate. I supported the decision to keep cheaters out of the Hall. Then came the Mitchell Report in 2007, exposing not only those we suspected of cheating but countless others.
Baseball’s new steroid policy came in 1991, actual steroid testing came in 2004, and then an announced list of penalties and suspensions arrived in 2005.
Still, an eye-opening number of baseball players, from all levels, and from a wide variety of statuses, were hit with suspensions after testing positive.
Pitchers, even relievers, were caught failing tests, challenging the belief that only the sluggers were benefitting from the cheating and only the most recognizable names.
Enough tests came back positive for Major League Baseball to unveiled stricter penalties for violators, and by then fans could feasibly question how many retired superstars already in the Hall of Fame had helped their careers by juicing.
Just because a bunch of household names got exposed after Congress finally decided to intervene didn’t mean players weren’t cheating years before Jose Canseco's tell-all book shook up the sport.
We’re far enough along in 2025 to understand that our sports icons and heroes were extraordinary for feats both positive and negative.
If the paradigm shift leads to Rose being welcomed into the Hall, it’s hard to justify keeping the juicers out.
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