What’s Happened to The Hall of Fame?

       That I believe is the question that has to be answered after the shocking results of probably the most star-studded ballot ever. With the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza as well as Craig Biggio (who led the pack with 68.2 % of the vote) Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa among others. Sure, most of these guys were accused of, linked to or confessed to using PED’s but can we deny what they were before the started the most controversial era in baseball history? All of these men were Hall of Famers before they made a stupid mistake, and had they not been related to PED’s, they were all sure fire first ballot Hall of Famers. But, even with all of the controversy, you still had a man that has the all-time record for home runs, the man who has one the most Cy Young Awards (7) of all –time, a man with 609 career home runs, a man with the most 60- homer seasons and one of only for men to collect 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. Can we deny those prolific stats, even if they are a little inflated? Can we deny how much fun it was when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were going back and forth for the home run crown in 1998? And lastly, can we deny how great all of these players were, even off of the juice? No.

Many voters don’t want a cheater (s) in the Hall, but what the Hall of Fame should be is a museum to the public, to show every era, controversial or not that baseball has or had to offer. If that means adding on the plaque that they were accused of drug use, then so be it, but these men deserve to be in the HOF, period. We can all agree on that, but some of us have a hard time deciding what the Hall of Fame really is. Is it a museum to represent the good, bad and ugly of baseball? Is it a place so sacred and holy that only the players that were legendary AND clean for their whole careers get in? To me, I believe that 200 years from now, we will want to know what happened during the so called “Steroid Era” and who was a part of shaping that time.

We cannot just sit back and erase a period of our games history because it’s not as perfect or clean as we would like it to be. In fact, if you think about it, we have likely let in several players that were PED users but were just never caught. What happens if the Bonds and the Clemens of the world never get in and 50 years down the road it is revealed that 5 or 6 players we unknowingly gave the games highest honour to? Would that be fair to them? No. Would that cause outrage and the demand for other stars to be let in? Yes. Would the Hall of Fame forever be viewed as a scam? Yes. We must change the ways people and legends are elected into the Hall, because this system isn’t working. Many people, including myself, were planning on a trip to see the induction ceremony to see some of our favourite childhood stars get enshrined into the Hall of Fame forever.

I know I was outraged when I heard the news yesterday, as millions of fans were. Something needs to change because the Hall of Fame is losing its identity, and that’s something that we need to fix, and need to fix now.

Nicholas Bell