Chicks dig the long ball

When the McGwire news broke, I told myself I wouldn't write about it, for a number of reasons, none of which are important here. But this piece on ESPN somehow changed my mind. It raises some interesting questions – for me at least – about two underlying issues of this Mark McGwire debate:

1. What does it mean to be a Hall of Famer?
   
2. How culpable should we admit MLB steroid users to be?
   

The first question is most poignantly intimated by ESPN LA writer Tony Jackson, who said, "I will continue to decline to vote for [McGwire on the Hall of Fame ballot] in the years to come despite the fact he put up Hall of Fame numbers over the course of his career and despite his admission" (emphasis mine).

The distinction here between Hall-of-Fame numbers and Hall of Famer is obviously troublesome. The driving principle, of course, is that being a Hall of Famer requires a particular personality (or perhaps adherence to certain rules, which I'll get to in a minute). Personally, I don't find the dichotomy necessary, and I would argue that it is a relatively recent invention, considering the Hall has always been – since day one – specifically filled with drunkards, womanizers, cheaters, and etcetera. This fact, of course, problematizes any arguments based on maintaining the sanctity, prestige, or other historical quality of Cooperstown. Frankly, this distinction seems an affront to that history. Traditionally speaking, the Hall of Fame has specifically undervalued so-called traditional values.

The second question is ultimately more complicated, and I don't know that I could or would even want to fully address it here. I've been thinking for a couple days of an appropriate metaphor to explain the tangled web of player accountability on this matter, but the best I've been able to come up with is this:

In today times, anyone who believes in a geocentric universe would be considered ignorant, but in the time before Copernicus, a person would be considered average or even intelligent for that same belief.

While this distinction is, in part, about our society's growth in scientific knowledge – which I think applies to the steroids debate as well – the more important distinction is about changes in our cultural knowledge. In a culture (pre-Copernican civilization) that believed in and fervently endorsed the geocentric model, it was normal and even self-preservationist to imagine the sun circling the Earth. So, hundreds of years in the future, we wouldn't consider those people idiots, though it's now clear that they were severely misinformed (through their cultural beliefs).

Similarly, in a culture (Major League Baseball) that seems to have believed in and fervently endorsed steroid use, were those who juiced really the social pariahs and evildoers that society at large is chastising years in the future? Or, were they just average MLB players during MLB's steroids era?

The point is: at some point we have to start blaming the institution for people's willingness to accept institutionalized knowledge. If there really was, as so many reports suggest, a "culture of steroids" during the so-called Steroids Era, should we blame members of that culture for succumbing to cultural norms?

Quote of the Week:

So many to choose from...

"What McGwire has suffered – and I can say it straight to McGwire's face – is nothing anywhere remote to what I've suffered. And he sits there and starts crying. Mark, there's no crying in baseball. You know that."

Jose Canseco