No, You Made It Awkward: On Steroid-Era Players and the Hall of Fame

Back in January, in a Facebook group devoted to the Effectively Wild podcast, one post noted how uncomfortable it would be if Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The poster discussed how the day in Cooperstown would be filled with awkward speeches, loud anti-PED rhetoric, and claims the Hall would be debased by their presence. But awkwardness is not an excuse. If the Pro Football Hall of Fame can enshrine Ray Lewis without a hitch, baseball can do something similar.

Baseball’s history is littered with greats who, if they were elected to the Hall of Fame today, would produce equally uncomfortable weekends, speeches and sentiments. Baseball, like America, tends to sanitize its history and mark acts of evil as “unfortunate.” In the social media age, some of the following players would have made Sunday in Cooperstown just as awkward.

Tris Speaker

One could argue Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame based on Tris Speaker’s resume alone. Speaker, along with Ty Cobb and Smokey Joe Wood, was accused by pitcher Dutch Leonard of betting on a game they knew was fixed. Cobb and Speaker were allowed to resign from the sport post-allegations. On top of the resignations, Leonard presented paper documents and letters to Johnson attempting to prove the allegations true. Johnson thought the information contained in said documents would be damaging to the sport and cause an uproar. 

Both Cobb and Speaker vehemently denied any betting took place. And Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis eventually reinstated them due to a lack of outright evidence. After these events, Landis instituted a new rule that any player caught betting on baseball would be suspended for a year and any player caught betting on his own team would receive a lifetime ban. Which leads us to…

Pete Rose

If Speaker has a place in the Hall with the cloud of betting surrounding him, Rose also should have a place. However, there’s another issue holding Rose back that should be more important than the violation of a “sacred” game.

Almost three years ago, an unidentified woman — who testified as part of a defamation suit Rose brought against former federal prosecutor John Dowd — said she began a sexual relationship with the Hit King in the early 1970s, when he was 34 and she was just turning 16. Rose, who was married at the time, said he thought she was already 16 at the start of their relationship. (The age of consent in Ohio is 16. Rose was playing for the Cincinnati Reds at the time.) While the tryst could’ve been legally consensual, it still would be suspect, given the power dynamics at play. 

In a radio interview around the same time period, Dowd indicated it wasn’t the first time Rose messed around with underage girls, with some of them not being legally acceptable. That should be the only thing keeping Rose from Cooperstown, not betting.

Paul Molitor

Molitor, who spoke out a half-decade ago against Alex Rodriguez being inducted into the Hall of Fame, had a little problem with drugs himself. Along with dozens of other players in baseball, Molitor was named in criminal court cases across the country alleging cocaine use. Drug dealers reportedly had access to team clubhouses and/or conducted deals there. Molitor was on a roster of names that included Keith Hernandez, Dave Parker, and Chili Davis. 

Granted, Molitor did start speaking out against drugs and gave anti-drug speeches to kids, but baseball picks and chooses what it wants to forgive players for. Molitor’s ordeal still gets framed as a man who had a hard time living up to his All-American image and had the drug forced on him by teammates as an escape. Darryl Strawberry eventually found God and is now in ministry with his wife, but people still mock him for his transgressions of 30 years ago. I guess not all players are worthy of sympathy. Shout out to the late Steve Howe.

Cap Anson

Labeled by SABR.org as “baseball first superstar,” Anson stood out above the rest. As the player-manager for the Chicago White Stockings in the late 19th century, Anson became the first player to reach the 3,000-hit mark and was the second manager in baseball history to win 1,000 games. 

He was also a racist who refused to step on the same field as black players.

Baseball’s color barrier can be directly attributed to Anson. In an 1883 exhibition game between the White Stockings and a local team in Toledo, Ohio, Anson refused to play in a game with Moses Fleetwood Walker, the opposing team’s only black player. While he ultimately gave in to pressure and played the game, Anson’s actions set the precedent for not only baseball’s ban of any player who wasn’t white but other sports like basketball and football, as well. Anson emboldened other racists to fight loudly for keeping baseball white, which it would remain for the next 64 years. 

Gaylord Perry

With the current discussion around what kind of cheating is acceptable and what isn’t, many baseball fans would put an asterisk not only on the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series championship but to the careers of PED users. In the confusion of good and bad cheating lies Gaylord Perry. A notorious deceiver, Perry openly admitted to doctoring baseballs in his autobiography, stating, “I reckon I tried everything on the old apple but salt and pepper and chocolate sauce topping…Of course, I’m reformed now. I’m a pure law-abiding citizen.”

Some writers projected that Perry was just keeping the media and other players on their toes as a little joke. But who would joke like that? That would be the equivalent of Andy Pettitte joking about using PEDs just to keep the public on their toes (and then testing positive for PED use). 

Perry eventually would be ejected from a game in 1982 for getting caught doctoring baseballs, which he neither confirmed nor denied. But having this infraction on a player’s resume would make his Hall of Fame candidacy shaky at best. Yet, Perry got into Cooperstown on his third try. If we’re going to accept that behavior into the Hall, we can accept it when the time comes to let Jose Altuve and Carlos Beltran in as well. Just bang the (trash can) slowly in their honor when they approach the mic.

Curt Schilling

Dear Lord, where do we start? The transphobia? The Islamophobia? All the phobias? The anti-journalist rhetoric? His recent tweets about his desire to disable 911 service for anti-fascist protestors? All of it?

Schilling hasn’t been on his best behavior post-retirement, comparing Muslims to Nazis, arguing with then-ESPN writer Keith Law about evolution, and supporting North Carolina’s ant-LGBT bill. His outspoken and extreme conservative views ring differently in our current era of political vitriol. One easily could dismiss his extremism as harmless if it wasn’t for the fact that people who think like him are in power, causing great pain to much of the population. That can’t be disputed. But beyond that, one would think writers would object to a player expressing blatant anti-media views. None of it matters to them, however, with Schilling expected to join the greats in Cooperstown in 2021. 

If you’re going to protest the potential awkwardness of Bonds and Clemens being enshrined, note that speeches from the players above would be just as awkward in 2020.