Does Mark McGwire belong in HOF

My buddy E-Luv, has made some pretty good arguements both pro and con on this issue, and it got me thinking about tomorrow's hall of fame announcements. Does a man who hit 583 career home runs, helped bring baseball back from the brink of obsolsolence, and set the single season home run record deserve to be immortally enshrined in Cooperstown? Does a man who knowingly cheated by using illegal supplements and steroids, though they were not banned by the rules of baseball at the time, and has never admitted nor proved guilty of anyting, deserve to be permenantly shunned and put in the same category as the 1919 Black Sox? That is the ulimate question.

The reality is McGwire does belong. He was and is the first face of the steroid era to be scrutinized in this manner, but he won't be the last. The same questions about steroids and the Hall-of-Fame are going to be asked for the next 10-15 years as more players become eligible. Tomorrow, Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn, two players never tainted by steroids should be elected unanomiously, but some idiot sports writer is going to leave their off, just so they won't be on 100% of the ballots.

But the problem is Ripken and Gwynn are going to be overshadowed with the McGwire questions and the steroid questions regardless of whether he gets in tomorrow and that is the true shame. Ripken and Gwynn deserve to go in above this fray. They were always professional, one of the few modern players to spend their entire career with single team (Orioles and Padres). Ripken and Gwynn always carried themselves with class and were talked about by their peers with the utmost respect of their abilities and desire to play the game the right way. It is almost as if they will represent the end of the previous era.

Mark McGwire will ultimately get into the hall. He should not be a first ballot inductee. He should not be allowed to share the stage with the aforementioned Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn. He should have to live in some form of baseball pergutory, that is somehow worse than those suffered by Bert Blyleven, Goose Gossage and Jim Rice. He needs to come clean, tell us what he did was wrong. We love a good story of redemption, and this could be the biggest. He could admit the error of his ways, and become the new "Luckiest man on the face of the Earth." We don't need some contrite, lawyer created confession ala Pete Rose for the sole purpose of rearing his ugly head back into the game.

However, in the meantime, we the fans, and the writers who vote for the hall, need more time to get a historical perspective on the impact steroids had on the game. Barry Bonds needs 22 HR to surpass Henry Aaron, and will be the new king by July or August. The Mitchell investigation, the government subpeona of the 2003 MLB testing, the Jason Grimsley fallout, and I am sure more evidence or information will come to light in the future that will allow us to have a greater understanding of the impact on the records. Should McGwire, Bonds, Sheffield, Giambi, Mota, Palmeiro, etc. go the way of Shoeless Joe, Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte and Pete Rose? Or will we look at 1985-2005 as the steroid era, much like 1900-1920 was the dead ball era.

Added 1/8 10:30 pm EST Sure enough, I just saw on Yahoo, that some schmuck left his ballot blank. This guy, should have his voting privledges revoked:

Paul Ladewski of the Daily Southtown in suburban Chicago wrote in a column Monday that he submitted a blank ballot because of doubts he had over performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

"At this point, I don't have nearly enough information to make a value judgment of this magnitude. In particular, that concerns any player in the Steroids Era, which I consider to be the 1993-2004 period, give or a take a season," Ladewski wrote.

"This isn't to suggest that Gwynn or Ripken or the majority of the other eligible candidates padded his statistics with performance-enhancers and cheated the game, their predecessors and the fans in the process. ... But tell me, except for the players themselves, who can say what they put into their bodies over the years with any degree of certainty?"

This views himself as some kind of hero, preserving the honor of the hall:

Past elections also were cited by Ladewski as reasons for submitting a blank ballot.

"What makes Gwynn and Ripken so special that they deserve to be unanimous selections?" he wrote. "Walter Johnson, Cy Young and Honus Wagner didn't receive such Hall passes. Neither did Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. In fact, nobody has in the history of the game. Based on the standards set by the Hall of Fame voters decades ago, is there a neutral observer out there who can honestly say Gwynn and Ripken should be afforded an unprecedented honor?"

Seems like kind of jerk to me. Shouldn't you just vote for who you think is deserving and let that vote make a statement in of itself? Stupid

Tell me what you think