Just over a week ago I asked in a Sox & Dawgs poll:
If you had a Hall of Fame vote would you vote for players who have been implicated in the Mitchell Report?
40 people responded that they would vote YES
29 people responded that they would vote NO
29 people responded that they would NEED MORE EVIDENCE EITHER WAY BEFORE VOTING
I think this shows that even with a very small sample that not everyone feels the same way about voting steroid era players into the Hall of Fame.
I voted yes and I did so for this reason. We now know that for a period of 15-20 years we had a steroid era in baseball. While we know now that nearly 90 players were linked in someway to performance enhancing drugs (PED’s) we also can say with pretty much certainty that number is not accurate and is likely very low. With that said we also have no idea truly how many players were on PED’s at the height of the era. I just feel it will be very difficult for the writers to have to pass judgement on players, especially without any proof either way, and that for the most part the playing field was fairly level in the era.
What I think they should do is label the era and explain it and the numbers explosion much like they explain the “deadball era” of the early 1900’s. Then let the writers vote on players of the era. I have always felt that players of certain era’s should be judged against their peers anyhow. But because baseball is more numbers based than any other sport it will probably never happen that way.
