STNDRD ISSUE 4 THE STNDRD VOLUME 4 | Page 101

When considering some players for baseball’s highest honor, could personality—not performance—be king? Ted Williams spat on fans. Ty Cobb beat a cripple in the grandstands. Babe Ruth caroused, debauched, and swashbuckled. Bob Feller called Jackie Robinson’s importance to the game “overstated.” What do these era-spanning, mega-talented, rousingly controversial, game-changing baseballers have in common? They’re all first ballot Hall of Famers. And despite their misdeeds, imperfections, and vices, nobody disputes their place in the storied Baseball Hall of Fame. In January, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), the organization responsible for voting former Major League Baseball players into the Baseball Hall of Fame, released the names of those they’d chosen for enshrinement in 2013. After 569 ballots were cast, the third highest total in the history of the voting, the results were perhaps more telling than controversial. What names adorned that magisterial list? None. Zilch. Nada. Not since 1996 had the list been blank. So what happened? A shallow talent pool? Not likely, because two of those eligible for enshrinement were Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, each boasting careers with nauseating numbers and larded with accomplishments. But like the Hall of Famers mentioned above, their careers are also synonymous with controversy, specifically for the shadowy chapter of Major League Baseball known as the Steroid Era, characterized by the prevalence of players using performanceenhancing drugs (PEDs) to balloon stats and extend playing careers to freakish lengths. PEDs are the most obvious and logical reason for excluding Bonds and Clemens from the ballot this past January, but could their exclusion be the result of some other punitive reason? Could citing PED use as the reason for refusing to vote for an otherwise worthy Hall of Fame candidate be just a nifty pretext for some sportswriters to punish a player for having a lousy personality? Let’s face it. It’s poi ntless to debate stats when considering whether Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are worthy of the Hall of Fame. Do we really need that Bill James moon-man mathematics, sabermetrics, to determine if 762 home runs or 354 wins cut the Hall of Fame enshrinement mustard? It’s silly. Even my aunt Dotty in Rochester, NY who saw only one baseball game in her life (an Orioles game in 1954 with Red Schoendienst at second base) knows Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are Hall of Famers. But is steroid use the real reason these juggernauts of baseball ballyhoo were rejected as first ballot Hall of Famers? In the guts of some voters, their defective personalities may dwarf their lofty, on-field numbers. To many, Barry Bonds is brash, self-important, colorless and flinty. Unlike the first ballot Hall of Famers mentioned earlier who played and lived with verve and alacrity and about whom sportswriters were generally sympathetic, Bonds was a clubhouse fungus and often as engaging to sports journalists as day-old guacamole. Roger Clemens poked some eyes as well. In addition to incidents like threatening umpire Terry Cooney in the 1990 ALCS, bullying the Hall of Fame by declaring that they’re “not going to tell [him] what hat [he’s] wearing,” and assaulting Mike Piazza with a piece of broken bat in the 2000 World Series, his penchant for being “injured” in big games—like pulling himself from Game 6 of the ‘86 Series because of the finger blister-heard-round-the-world (a move for which he later blamed John McNamara)—have many questioning his commitment and veracity. It seems those writers who did vote for Bonds and Clemens “contextualized” the PED era and focused on nothing but stats—making Bonds and Clemens no-brainers. But it’s fair to wonder just how many Hall of Fame voters weren’t willing to contextualize the PED era for these two guys because Barry and Roger simply aren’t likeable. Sportswriters can be a fickle, grudge-holding bunch. As a writer myself, I’m not unfamiliar with the peculiarities and prejudices that inhabit the souls of even the most professional scribes, and sometimes a journalist’s skin is more paper than pachyderm. The thought of getting the last laugh in the HOF voting isn’t inconceivable. In her January 9th article for SFGate.com, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer and president of the BBWAA Susan Slusser said of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens that she just couldn’t bring herself to vote for the two players “with clear ties to steroid use.” Recently I asked her if she thought a sportswriter would offer PED use simply as a pretext to exclude deserving players from the HOF because they had lousy personalities. “I don’t think so,” she said. But it only takes a quick scan of Hall of Fame voting results to see that many baseball writers believe, like Ms. Slusser, that Bonds and Clemens aren’t worthy— for some reason or another. Sports columnist Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News also omitted Barry and Roger from his ballot this year until he has compiled “as complete a picture as possible of the Major League Baseball landscape” during the Steroid Era. I asked him if personality, not PEDs, prevented some sportswriters for voting for Bonds and Clemens. “I’m not going to say it never happens,” he said, “but I don’t know of any.” He reminded me that “everyone who votes takes it seriously” so to discriminate against just Barry and Roger for lousy personalities would seem unlikely because “there are jerks in every clubhouse.” But for all the writers who didn’t vote for Bonds and Clemens, there were just as many who did. Sportswriter Art Spander of the San Francisco Examiner, with 53 years of sports reporting under his belt, was among the voters who checked the boxes next to the names of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on his ballot. When I suggested that some writers might withhold their vote from a worthy player because of a lousy personality he believed No. 101 THE STNDRD LIFESTYLE - THE ARTIST ISSUE “Ted Williams spat on fans. Ty Cobb beat a cripple in the grandstands. Babe Ruth caroused, debauched, and swashbuckled. Bob Feller called Jackie Robinson’s importance to the game “overstated.” What do these era-spanning, mega-talented, rousingly controversial, game-changing baseballers have in common? They’re all frst ballot Hall of Famers.” Resized 9.00004 by 11.0 to 9.0 by 10.875 and Adjusted to 98.8% Vertical and 100% Horizontal 117_TSM_Issue4_Full.indd 101 8/5/13 9:49 AM