maybe its me, but if steroids is enough for one of them to not make the hall of fame, shouldn't it be a disqualifier for ALL suspected steroid users?

If McGwire didn't make the hall, but Barry did, it would pretty much say "steroid use keeps you out of the hall...unless you were REALLY REALLY REALLY good when you used them"

I think the argument people make for Barry is that he was good prior to getting really big. Whereas Big Mac's improvement was more marked. Granted he hit 49 home runs as a rookie, but that was his best year up until 1996.

If you use the strike year (1994) as a cutoff, here are the numbers:
McGWIRE
SEASONS G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1986-1994 110 371 61 93 15 1 26 73 65 84 1 1 0.251 0.365 0.511 0.876
1995-2001 126 406 89 113 16 0 49 108 105 120 1 0 0.276 0.428 0.678 1.106

BONDS
SEASONS G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1986-1994 142 502 99 143 31 5 29 84 90 79 34 10 0.285 0.393 0.539 0.932
1995-2001 144 458 118 144 29 4 44 108 149 72 20 5 0.317 0.484 0.691 1.175

But doesn't that make assumptions about when Barry and McGwire started and stopped using steroids on top of the un-proven assumption that either of them used steroids?

Man, Bill Plaschke is stupid. I wish there was a literacy test to get a Hall of Fame vote.

I agree with Fitz -- Plaschke (one of the more idiotic writers in the country) claims McGwire didn't put up Hall of Fame numbers until he took steroids. How the hell does Plaschke know when Big Mac started taking steroids? The more you think about it, the more hilarious his thinking gets -- he tips off his own a priori assumptions about McGwire. What a douche.

(And thanks for the shout-out to my sis-in-law.)

From Sean's stats, I don't see McGwire as making a bigger improvement than Bonds (.OPS gain is almost exactly the same). If anything, McGwire's improvement can be more easily explained... he was healthier.

And as Brian said, it is a joke to try to guess when (if) these guys started taking steroids. Did Bonds start in '92, when he had his first 1.000+ OPS season, or '93 when he had his first 40+ season, or 2001 when he hit 73? What if he started to take steroids for sprinters early in his career and that is why he was able to steal so many bases?
Did McGwire start before his rookie year, when he had a .988 OPS, or in '92, or '95, or '98?

Nobody but McGwire and Bonds has any idea, so you can't claim that one was HOF worthy before they started and the other wasn't, because you have no idea when that point was.

There's no sense worrying about Mac and Bonds -- they were good players who broke the rules (but didn't get officially caught -- yet, anyway) to become great playes. Last time I checked, another player who did that (Gaylord Perry) is already in the Hall. No double standards, unfortunately.

However, MLB does need to put together a real illegal substance abuse policy (i.e., season-long suspensions for those being caught) to prevent arguments like this one from happening in the future.

Someone please explain to me what rules McGwire may have brokne. Baseball did not ban performance-enhancing drugs until after McGwire retired.

Well, at what point in time was betting on games explicitly banned?

Unfortunately, if proof exists that any of these players knowingly took anabolic steroids, I'd agree not to vote them in the hall, regardless of the state of rules for baseball at that time.

It's just a different thing than scuffing a baseball, corking a bat or even getting caught with coke, pot or a dui. It's much more like consistently betting on games.

But, once again, there should be proof consisting of much more than speculation or cheap publication.

Betting on baseball was explicitly banned by Rule 21 in 1927.

http://www.baseball1.com/bb-data/rose/rose-faq.html
http://www.baseball1.com/bb-data/rose/rule21.html

PED use is nothing like betting on games. When players bet on games there's a question of whether we're watching an athletic competition or bad theater. That's the fundamental reason why baseball has such a heavy-handed approach with gambling compared to other rules violations.

Rob wins. Betting on baseball threatens the integrity of the game, while steroids threaten how the game is played. better the latter than the former.

You could make a case that steroids threaten the integrity of the games, but I agree that gambling is still worse.

You could make a case that any training of any type threatens the integrity of the game. Because if I lift a weight that you don't I've got an advantage above and beyond the phyiscal gifts I was born with. What's the difference between having a personal chef and taking steroids?

Steriods are illegal. That's the difference right there. From a players standpoint I can see a lot of reasons to come down harshly on steriod users, because it increases the level of competition pushing me (a player in this case) towards potentially harmful behavior.

But as a fan I don't really care. So player A works out more efficiently than player B. If player A discovered Ninjitsu instead of steroids would anybody make a fuss? Sure it's illegal but I can't get to outraged about illegal self destructive behavior.

I was a little too vague.

I was actually referring to Shoeless Joe Jackson. But let's go through it.

THere's no evidence that SJJ threw any game he played in or ducked his post season performance at all. He as a player did not impact the essence of the games he played in.

Pete Rose, apparently, only bet on his team to win. That would not create any incentive to do anything other than win, which is what sports is all about, as long as you're playing within the rules, explicit and otherwise commonly known.

Taking anabolic steroids changes the actual nature of the competition itself. Several years ago, I didn't have much of a problem with it. But I read several articles about the differences between Anabolic Steroids and other things like HGH, creatine, andro and even the sort of silly argument of weight training, period. I asked all my friends who were doctors. There is a HUGE difference between anabolic steroids and everything else. HUGE. It turns all players into monsters of themselves. They know it. Everyone knows it. It's so obvious, that even Bud Selig knows it.

It changes the entire nature of the competition in a way that other enhancing habits don't. When people say that, in principle, betting affects the integrity of the game but steroids don't is mostly because it's easier to separate betting from the game than it is to separate steroids from other performance-enhancing habits. The line is cleaner.

But it makes no sense in practice.

Neither Pete Rose nor Shoeless Joe Jackson affected the integrity of baseball in any way near the way that the apparent use of steroids has.

P.S. I am not condoning betting on baseball in any form, but I just don't see it the way many others do. At worst in the given known cases, it is on par with steroids, not *a priori* worse; at best it was in its most notorious cases a moral neutral, given the apparent character and performances of the players involved.