An article I did...

[clancyphile]

I'm going to stick it here, since it has to do with the Hall of Fame, but here is an article I did on Gaylord Perry's presence in the Hall of Fame:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346791/eject-gaylord-perry

[Outlander]

Enjoyed the article but have to disagree on the final statement. I just don't think it is a good idea to open that can of worms and starting ejecting players out of the hall of fame. During the election process writers should have taken that into consideration but he is in now there and there are far worse players in the hall of fame than Perry.

[dlk9s]

I love how commenters insert idiotic political commentary in the discussion of baseball article.

[RockCoCougars]

Why do steroid apologists hate Gaylord Perry so much? I'm not a huge fan of his act myself... he peaked during a dead ball era of baseball and had to pitch until he was like 60 to get HOF stats. That said, any cheating that he did was right under the nose of the umpires, whose job was to stop him from doing it. To be a juicer, you pretty much have to be a cheater AND a liar... at least Perry was honest about it.

[gregmag]

Harold, I have some disagreements with what you wrote, but congratulations on a good piece of work and a high-profile publication. Well done!

[Ennder]

Why do steroid apologists hate Gaylord Perry so much? I'm not a huge fan of his act myself... he peaked during a dead ball era of baseball and had to pitch until he was like 60 to get HOF stats. That said, any cheating that he did was right under the nose of the umpires, whose job was to stop him from doing it. To be a juicer, you pretty much have to be a cheater AND a liar... at least Perry was honest about it.

 

I don't really care one way or the other about this topic, but this reasoning lacks any basis in logic.

[1992casey]

Perry's "cheating" was kind of a legend, and for whatever reason, players and fans had fun with it.

 

While I don't agree with the main idea of the article, I think the quality is excellent.

[RockCoCougars]

Why do steroid apologists hate Gaylord Perry so much? I'm not a huge fan of his act myself... he peaked during a dead ball era of baseball and had to pitch until he was like 60 to get HOF stats. That said, any cheating that he did was right under the nose of the umpires, whose job was to stop him from doing it. To be a juicer, you pretty much have to be a cheater AND a liar... at least Perry was honest about it.

 

I don't really care one way or the other about this topic, but this reasoning lacks any basis in logic.

 

How so? By throwing a spitter you are blatantly breaking the rules in front of four sets of eyes and an opposing team that all should be looking to stop you from doing so. By juicing you are gaining an advantage, but taking very little risk as long as you lie. A good analogy to me would be taking an exam... the spitter thrower would be looking over someone's shoulder a few feet from the instructor, while the juicer bought an answer key for the test last week.

[Ennder]

 

How so? By throwing a spitter you are blatantly breaking the rules in front of four sets of eyes and an opposing team that all should be looking to stop you from doing so. By juicing you are gaining an advantage, but taking very little risk as long as you lie. A good analogy to me would be taking an exam... the spitter thrower would be looking over someone's shoulder a few feet from the instructor, while the juicer bought an answer key for the test last week.

 

 

Fair analogy. Both of them cheated and should get the same punishment and be thought of the same way. It is also fair to assume that the guy who just looked over someone's shoulder probably would have bought the answer key if it were available to him and not that expensive, most likely nobody offered him the answer sheet.

[RockCoCougars]

 

How so? By throwing a spitter you are blatantly breaking the rules in front of four sets of eyes and an opposing team that all should be looking to stop you from doing so. By juicing you are gaining an advantage, but taking very little risk as long as you lie. A good analogy to me would be taking an exam... the spitter thrower would be looking over someone's shoulder a few feet from the instructor, while the juicer bought an answer key for the test last week.

 

 

Fair analogy. Both of them cheated and should get the same punishment and be thought of the same way. It is also fair to assume that the guy who just looked over someone's shoulder probably would have bought the answer key if it were available to him and not that expensive, most likely nobody offered him the answer sheet.

 

Point taken. Both cheaters, but who gains the greater reward? If you juice theoretically you would have an advantage every minute that you were on the field. If you are throwing a spitter, how many times a game can you get an edge? You may have the best 'spurve' in the world, but if you throw it every pitch, you are getting busted.

 

At any rate, though I completely disagree with the premise, hats off to clancyphile for picking a topic that will stir a spirited debate.

[dlk9s]

Perry's "cheating" was kind of a legend, and for whatever reason, players and fans had fun with it.

Yeah, I always saw Perry's spitball thing as sort of a joke that was more entertainment than cheating. Of course, he did cheat, but it became this thing that was like performance art. "Am I doing it or am I not? You're going to have to figure it out."

[pogokat]

Congrats on getting published in such a renowned source!

[JimH5]

Perry's crimes happened in front of full stadiums, with opponents, umpires & media all within sight. He also altered a ball, not himself. His crimes didn't require the help of doctors making fraudulent prescriptions.

 

So to put his rule infractions in the same category as a PED user is to ignore some very real differences.

 

Brandon Phillips is 6'0" and weighs 200 lb. Same as me. We are not identical.

[MNBrew]

JimH5, you're invoking a moral standard & applying it inequitably. Whether it was the ball or the individual that was altered, cheating to gain a competitive advantage is cheating to gain a competitive advantage, period.

 

If the notion of cheating to gain competitive advantage is the criteria used against McGwire, Sosa, Clemens, etc., then the "how" doesn't matter and it should be universally applied. If it's not, then this media-driven backlash against steroid users -- proven or alleged, or players unjustly presumed guilty simply because of when they played -- is a grievous & shameful double standard.

 

Greenies & amphetamines were illegally obtained and used to gain competitive advantage "back in the day" just as steroids/HGH/etc. have been recently -- altering the individual, not the ball -- and again, not that they improved play directly, but they sure did enable an accelerated recovery time -- THE SAME & ONLY PURPOSE STEROIDS HAVE BEEN PROVEN TO SERVE. If taking those then wasn't cheating in terms of the rules of baseball at the time, then that's the same as EVERYONE who used steriods prior to baseball outlawing them, regardless of how they were acquired.

 

I think cheating is wrong. But what we're seeing nowadays amounts to selective judgements & self-righteous moralizing by the media &, by extension, members of the BBWAA. That the "character" clause is invoked or referenced now so often when it wasn't before (other than instances of gambling on baseball, which is also addressed directly) creates an uneven playing field and ultimately does the whole HOF a disservice.

 

To me, short of doing an exhaustive investigation on every single player in the HOF to come up with info on character, legal & illegal habits (shall we be revoking Eck, Molitor, & Stargell, & anyone else who did coke, an illegal drug & stimulant?), moral choices, etc., with the purposes of reconsidering the HOF-worthiness of everyone to include angles such as today's moral standards, pervasive media, & investigative reporting, I say the BBWAA needs to vote on players based on how they performed on the field, and then let the fans who follow the their team & the game, society in general (NOT the media), and time form the lens & basis for judgements.

 

That's the only way to ensure consistency and, to me, ultimately, true credibility.

 

(Clancy, thanks for bringing this up. I've been on a Perry-related rant ever since everyone starting claiming moral high ground re: steroid users. Congrats on getting published!)

[JimH5]

JimH5, you're invoking a moral standard & applying it inequitably.

 

And you are insisting that today's voting membership of the BBWAA be tied to the 1991 membership's interpretation of the voting rules--even though the HOF itself allows for differences in judgment through the years.

 

Today's writers are allowed to interpret the rules as they see fit. Same as it was when Perry was inducted, or in 1936.

 

Morality is up for interpretation. People think different things at different times in history. And people have disagreements. To some, Tom Yawkey is an immoral man for being the last of the owners to integrate African Americans onto his team. To others, Yawkey was generous and kind and a man of great character. Both sides can be right.

 

 

but they sure did enable an accelerated recovery time -- THE SAME & ONLY PURPOSE STEROIDS HAVE BEEN PROVEN TO SERVE.

 

You will never get me to believe that steroid use and the muscle mass that it enables didn't contribute to Sammy Sosa having 3 seasons of 60+ homers, or Luis Gonzalez going from having a Craig Counsell physique to 57 HR.

 

Mark McGwire can say "The only reason I took steroids was for health purposes." But throughout all of history, no naturally healthy person ever hit 70 major league homers in a season. Regardless of his intent, or Sosa's or Gonzalez's, they were able to do superhuman things, never seen before or since.

 

They didn't do it alone. Steroid-enhanced pitchers throwing suspect balls in smaller parks added to the totals, for sure.

 

But there are parents who lost sons to suicide who insist that steroid use contributed to those deaths. People go into Roid Rage. Their brains are in an altered state to create that. Nobody ever went into a chemically altered state from throwing a doctored baseball.

 

 

That's the only way to ensure consistency and, to me, ultimately, true credibility.

 

I think you're doing yourself a disservice by ignoring the context of the times and the decisions of others. That Gaylord Perry is in the Hall, or Kirby Puckett, or Judge Landis doesn't take away from the HOF. If they were brought to a vote today, in today's context, knowing what we know about these men, they might not be elected. Bill Conlin might not win the Spink award.

 

But the Hall doesn't have a cleansing policy. There are no do-overs, the same way that the official records of baseball don't whitewash away the achievements of players who cheated.

[JohnBriggs12]

Why do steroid apologists hate Gaylord Perry so much? I'm not a huge fan of his act myself... he peaked during a dead ball era of baseball and had to pitch until he was like 60 to get HOF stats. That said, any cheating that he did was right under the nose of the umpires, whose job was to stop him from doing it. To be a juicer, you pretty much have to be a cheater AND a liar... at least Perry was honest about it.

 

I disagree. Perry could have quit at 39 and his stats were easily HOF worthy. Look at the innings he logged. What a workhorse. I saw him throw 15 innings against the Brewers in April of 1974. He stayed in there after blowing a 4-0 lead by allowing 2 runs each in the 8th and 9th. Imagine that happening today? He was finally removed and replaced by Ken Sanders in the 16th who promptly gave up a walk off HR to Bobby Coluccio. That remains one of the most amazing games I have ever seen, live or not in more than 50 years of following baseball. At the time, I felt I had seen greatness and that was Perry.

[MNBrew]

But there are parents who lost sons to suicide who insist that steroid use contributed to those deaths. People go into Roid Rage. Their brains are in an altered state to create that. Nobody ever went into a chemically altered state from throwing a doctored baseball.

 

You're arguing points on the evils of steroids -- views with which I concur -- but then are implying that Roid Rage and chemically altered states are essentially a different level of cheating, and therefore that chemically altered state is more wrong or against the rules or the spirit of the game than doctoring the ball is. There's obviously a lapse of time between eras, but the question of cheating & morality isn't necessarily any different.

 

Apply the same logic to the cocaine, amphetamines, etc. that plenty of current HOFers took . . . Why, then, don't those players & circumstances merit the same levels of moral scrutiny? Illegal drugs such as these have done and continue to do more harm to individuals and our society -- and on a much wider scale -- than steroids, and those drugs which are stimulants have some of the same effects as steroids.

 

My point is that cheating is cheating.

 

It seems highly selective and contradictory that many HOFers look down at suspected or proven steroid users as cheaters . . . but don't make any fuss at all about a long-known cheater WHO WAS CAUGHT CHEATING IN A GAME (Gaylord Perry) standing among them, not to mention any of the previous generations' cocaine, amphetamine, & greenie users.

[sveumrules]

Doctoring the baseball, while against the letter of the law, has been a part of baseball for most of its existence and continues to this day. I'd liken it to speeding, most of the time you can get away with it and you're only gonna get pulled over if you're blatant about it.

 

Steroids on the other hand are treated more like the OJ or Casey Anthony case. Suspected users are villified in the court of public opinion, guilty until proven innocent.

 

It's just an apples and oranges comparison for me. It's not like Perry broke the pitching metrics by doctoring the ball, whereas someone like juiced Bonds made video gamers jealous of his real life stat line.

[JimH5]

You're arguing points on the evils of steroids -- views with which I concur -- but then are implying that Roid Rage and chemically altered states are essentially a different level of cheating, and therefore that chemically altered state is more wrong or against the rules or the spirit of the game than doctoring the ball is. There's obviously a lapse of time between eras, but the question of cheating & morality isn't necessarily any different.

 

I'm saying that because steroids affect one's physical makeup, because they come with dangerous risks, because they are done in secrecy and because they are illegal, that cheating with steroids is a greater crime than doctoring a baseball.

 

Apply the same logic to the cocaine, amphetamines, etc. that plenty of current HOFers took . . . Why, then, don't those players & circumstances merit the same levels of moral scrutiny? Illegal drugs such as these have done and continue to do more harm to individuals and our society -- and on a much wider scale -- than steroids, and those drugs which are stimulants have some of the same effects as steroids.

 

Cocaine and marijuana and even Dock Ellis's LSD are generally recognized as recreational drugs, so I would put them in a different category than amphetamines. I'm not defending their use, but I don't think people used them specifically to play better baseball. And with amphetamines, the culture of the sport was such that there was no secrecy about them. Steroid users have known all along that it is wrong, hence the need for masking agents, etc. to keep the use a secret.

 

My point is that cheating is cheating.

 

Agreed. But a child stealing a few coins off of their parents dresser isn't the same as Bernie Madoff stealing billions from investors. We look at the two cases differently, and dish out punishment differently. It's too simplistic (for me) to say cheating is cheating. I have to consider the context of the era, the impact, the danger, etc.

 

It seems highly selective and contradictory that many HOFers look down at suspected or proven steroid users as cheaters . . . but don't make any fuss at all about a long-known cheater WHO WAS CAUGHT CHEATING IN A GAME (Gaylord Perry) standing among them, not to mention any of the previous generations' cocaine, amphetamine, & greenie users.

 

Agreed, and I think that's where the 15 year rule comes in, or the various Veterans Committees. We may one day reach a point where steroid use isn't viewed upon with the same scorn as it is now.

 

Orlando Cepeda and Fergie Jenkins had to wait for their induction. Maybe the voters of the future will look differently at steroid use.