Yesterday was the annual balloting for the entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame (a wonderful place by the way, although I have not been since I was just a young pup). Ripken – IN, although somehow EIGHT voters opted to leave him off their ballot. Gwynn – IN. Two shoo in candidates and deservedly so. These two guys meet the criteria in every sense of the word.
Which brings us to Mark McGwire. Just an ugly, ugly performance in the batter’s, uh, ballot box. Kind of like 0 for 4 with 4 K’s. 23.5% of 545 ballots cast. 128 votes. Let’s not even bring the steroid question into it (yet). Looking up his stats online, I see he is listed at 6’5”, 225. I had to laugh at that. Big Mac hasn’t been 225 since, well, um, quite a few Big Macs ago, or maybe the Congressional Hearings. Honey, I Shrunk the First Baseman. In 1998, I’d guess he was more like 275. But going back to the stats, we’ve got a guy here who hit .263 lifetime with 1626 hits in 16 seasons. That’s an average of a little over 100 hits per season. Roughly half of what Gwynn or Ripken had. Not really hall type numbers.
583 homeruns is pretty good. But one must consider that 245 of those came from 1996-1999. That’s 42% of his career total in a 4 year span. By the way, he was age 32-35 for those seasons. 65 homers in 1999 and two years later he was done.
However, McGwire is not the real problem here, just a part of it. According to a quote attributed to Tony Gwynn, “Well, we all knew, players knew, owners knew — everybody knew,” he said. “We didn’t say anything about it.”
Did the union know, or did they just look the other way as the salaries of home run hitters went through the stratosphere? One of my biggest gripes is that too many folks are saying things like ‘steroids were not banned in baseball then’. I guess you could just pick them up at your neighborhood Walmart. Uh, no. Steroids were illegal without a doctor’s prescription. So what if they weren’t banned. If you possessed them or were using them without a prescription, you were BREAKING THE LAW. That seems worse to me.
The bottom line is that the home run chase of 1998 brought fans back to the stadium after the devastating strike and the owners, players, media, and everyone else who stood to make money off it ignored what was obvious. Anyone with two eyeballs and even a passing knowledge of steroids could observe what was going on. One only need look at numerous before and after photos of some of these guys. Compare stats for certain periods of certain players to see the increase and subsequent drop off of the power numbers.
Just remember. Chicks dig the long ball.
Rant Away.
