Should MLB players suspected of PED use be penalized in Hall of Fame voting?

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This is a post written by Jeff Herbst. Jeff has had a passion for sports ever since he could first walk and enjoys writing in his spare time. He works with Phoenix Bats, a company that manufacturers wood bats and specialty composite wood bats for amateur and professional ball players around the globe.

Since 1936, the baseball Hall of Fame has inducted 296 players, managers and executives who have excelled on the field of play, behind the scenes as manager, coach or executive, or who played a part in advancing the game of baseball itself. In its induction criteria, players must have played a minimum of ten years, and have been retired for five years. A screening committee then ciphers through the list of eligible players after they have waited the mandatory five-year period after retirement. Once the screening committee clears the list of lesser-qualified players, members of the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) must then cast their votes for players on the ballot and players who receive a minimum of 75 percent of the votes cast is automatically inducted.

While the process itself may seem foolproof, there are flaws in the system and those flaws have certainly come into play during and after what has been termed as baseball’s Steroid Era.

The Steroid Era can be loosely defined as the era between the late 1980s until now, when many ballplayers were suspected to have used performance enhancing drugs to in order to increase offensive output. Many players during this time were alleged to have used PEDs, while others actually tested positive for banned PED substances after MLB implemented PED testing in 2003.

The voting bloc for baseball’s Hall of Fame, the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) has largely denied entry into the hallowed halls of baseball for players suspected of PED use, including those who have tested positive in recent years. Mark McGwire, the slugging first baseman who originally broke Roger Maris’ all-time single-season home run record in 1998, is one such player who has failed to gain enough votes for entry. In the five years that McGwire has been eligible for Hall of Fame induction, the highest number of votes he has achieved has been 23.7 percent in 2010, far short of the 75 percent required for automatic induction.

So too is the case with former designated hitter Rafael Palmeiro. Palmeiro famously declared at a Congressional hearing in 2005, “Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids, period. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.” However, just four months later, Palmeiro tested positive for a banned substance, rendering his very public statement useless. Despite the fact that Palmeiro is just one of four men in baseball history who have collected 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, he only received 11 percent of the votes in his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility.

Cheating is cheating, no matter what form it takes. That is exactly why Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose have been barred from entry into the Hall of Fame—they were both involved in gambling on their own teams in some way. Baseball writers in the BBWAA have taken a stand that anyone accused of, or who tested positive for PED use also cheated and also should not gain entry in baseball’s hallowed halls.

For this writer, were I eligible to vote, I too would absolutely not cast a vote for any player who willingly changed his body via unscrupulous means in order to pad his statistics. Are there players in the Hall of Fame who were not the nicest of people, or who were disliked for various reasons? Yes, but none of them were accused of cheating the game. The Hall of Fame should only be reserved for players who earned it the right and honest way.