I’m somewhat surprised to see this happening after Bud Selig’s election to the Hall of Fame:
With Selig’s induction, Hall of Fame voters are changing their stance on suspected cheaters. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle announced she’ll now vote for players who she believe cheated, since Selig is now in the HOF.
Senseless to keep steroid guys out when the enablers are in Hall of Fame. I now will hold my nose and vote for players I believe cheated.
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) December 4, 2016
And she’s not the only one.
The stance might seem bizarre, but it’s a perfectly reasonable response to Selig getting in. Selig didn’t do nearly enough to prevent or stop baseball’s steroid era. He was a willing enabler and because of that, the league’s reputation suffered greatly. If his actions are deemed good enough to get into the Hall of Fame, than those he enabled belong too. It’s logically sound reasoning.
I don’t buy it. Selig, despite being commissioner, had little power to prosecute players for drug use during the steroid era. The union’s position during that time was that drug testing was off table, for many good reasons. It was an unreasonable search. It was an invasion of privacy. MLB could go after players with cause, but then teams would need to do the distasteful act of spying on their players.
Frankly, over time, I’ve come to believe this issue belonged in the MLBPA. The owners were not hurt by steroid use. The fans were not hurt by steroid use, except for the few who believe in some mythical golden age of purity. The people hurt were the players not taking PEDs. This wasn’t and isn’t a management versus players issue, but a player versus player issue, and it should be handled by the union.
Selig was not passing out needles. A group of ultra-competitive athletes acted like ultra-competitive athletes and rekindled interest in their sport. The players knew what was going on. They could have gone to the union and said, “We want drug testing. We want this to stop,”, and the union could have done this internally. The steroid era was a failure of the players, not of management.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2hbeU3E
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