With the Hall of Fame class announced yesterday we saw Mark McGwire fall well short of the 75% of the votes he needed to get in. That really is no surprise to anyone. A bigger surprise was Roberto Alomar being left out in his first try. As far as second basemen are concerned his numbers are one of the best of all time. He was able to hit for a high average, surprising power at times, and very hard to keep off the base paths. He was also a premiere defensive player who was one of the smoothest glovemen I've ever seen at the position. What he did on the field should have easily granted him entry into the games elite but I think he was left out due to the generation he played in.
I have to question if some voters had steroids on the mind when casting their ballots on Alomar. Alomar has NEVER been linked to steroid use (as far as I know) and I'm not accusing him of anything. If I had to bet on it I'd say he was clean but I'm curious what the voters thought. Ten years ago I think he gets in.
It's sad to look at the players I watched growing up like this and trying to determine if they did or didn't take anything to help gain an edge but you have to do that now. Jose Canseco's books and confessions on steroid use in baseball will forever change how we view the great players during this last few decades. Canseco didn't tell us anything most baseball fans didn't already know but it wasn't something anyone wanted to talk about. We all had a good idea that players like Sosa, McGwire, and Canseco were up to something but we enjoyed seeing players hit the ball 500 feet and breaking all the big time records from the past. Even after Ken Caminiti's infamous Sports Illustrated story came out where he admitted to using steroids we acted shocked and told ourselves it was a isolated incident. It wasn't until Canseco started calling out our favorite players that we took notice.
That image of Sosa, Palmeiro, and McGwire sitting before congress wearing suits they must have bought before their steroid use (was it just me or were those suits way too tight on them) will be forever be burned into my memory. I remember watching McGwire telling us he did not want to talk about the past and thinking how bad I felt for the Maris family. I remember watching Sosa forget how to understand or speak the English language and almost being embarrassed to be a baseball fan. Then it was Palmeiro's turn and he took a stand, pointing his finger and adamantly proclaiming his innocence. Palmeiro's stance got me excited and I believed him. My thought was that Canseco pointed out a couple of obvious players and just tried to bring others down with him. Palmeiro was taking a stand for not just himself but for all the falsely accused players out there.
Then August 1st, 2005 came. Just two weeks after hitting his 500th Home Run, Palmeiro was suspended for testing positive for steroids. My faith for all players instantly went out the door and I no longer tried to fool myself into thinking it wasn't as widespread of a problem then what it really was. Palmeiro never played another game in the Major League again.
Canseco has changed how we look at players and their successes. My question is how will Canseco be viewed when it's all said and done. Will he be viewed as a hero? The guy who finally stood up and spoke out against all the players wrong doings. The guy who finally forced baseball to do something about his obvious drug problems. I do think he should be applauded for helping baseball change his drug policies and standards. No matter what you want to say he, in the end, did help clean up the game. But is he a hero? Far from.
Canseco spent his entire career cheating the game. I'm not dumb enough to think he was the first person to take steroids so I'm not one of those who say he introduced them to the game. Canseco was a good hitter with tremendous power. Early in his career he had a ton of speed and was the first ever 40-40 player. He was a below average, at best, defensive player. It's safe to say that without his ability to hit the ball a very long way his career would not have been as long as it was. Steroids made his career. He hit 462 career home runs, 38 short of the 500 milestone. After the 2001 season he went unsigned and never played again. Rumors from Canseco that he was being black-balled by baseball to ensure he'd never hit 500 home runs started to swirl. It was just a few years later "Juiced" would be published and the firestorm would begin. Now Canseco was making money again on baseball and steroids. It's one thing for a reporter write a book about this sort of thing. They never made millions cheating the game themselves like Canseco did. He gets the thought that the game was cheating him out of a milestone even though he cheated the game a long time before that.
Jose Canseco is the kind of guy that will do everything he can to keep his name in the paper or to make a buck. He has ZERO loyalty to anyone but himself and money. Since his book he has done bad reality TV series and even celebrity boxing. He has become a nothing more then a washed up steroid junkie clinging on to the little fame he may still have. While many will view him as a hero for opening baseballs eyes to it's steroid issue I'll always view him as a joke.
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