Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were the two most dominant ballplayers of their era, their mind boggling statistics among the best this game has ever seen.
But this sport is about more than numbers, it is about the integrity of the undertaking itself. From the time of Shoeless Joe, to the days of Pete Rose, there was a code written into the very DNA of this endeavor. These players were cheating the basic beauty and the fundamental pledge of baseball, it's ode to purity and to perfection without taint. Their actions reflected not a lack of moral strength outside the lines but rather within them.
The Hall of Fame is the ultimate shrine for those who have met the highest of all standards in performance. If use of performance enhancing drugs does not act as barrier to enshrinement then an integral element of what make baseball great will have been lost, and the Hall of Fame should come with an asterisk, a/k/a the Hall of Shame.
1 comment:
In the age of anything goes, when the baser aspects of human nature in all spheres of life are either tolerated or celebrated, should we be surprised that our National Pastime may be subjected to the same blight?
JE
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