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GABE LACQUES
Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

Why Joe Morgan is wrong about Baseball Hall of Fame voting

Gabe Lacques
USA TODAY
Joe Morgan speaks at the Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony in 2017.

Joe Morgan is wrong. 

Those four words should suffice in response to the Hall of Fame second baseman's plea that voters charged with inducting members to baseball's shrine should not elect players ensnared in performance-enhancing drug use, that they simply "don't belong" in Cooperstown. 

Yet Morgan, in his role as vice chairman of the hall, took the time to construct a well-considered and quite legitimate position that represents the worldview of he and (most of) his fellow Hall of Famers, so the Cincinnati Reds legend at least deserves to know why, at 74, he is drifting toward the wrong side of history. 

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Morgan is wrong because he is too late. 

Undoubtedly, there are Hall of Famers who used performance-enhancing drugs. If you want to consider amphetamines a PED, this is a slam dunk. 

If you want to consider players whose career peaks touched the heart of the steroid era, this is a layup.

But lest we forget, the great awakening in regard to modern steroid use in the game dates to 1988, when Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell, appearing on a television show, correctly fingered Jose Canseco as the face of modern PED use. 

Lest we forget, former major league pitcher and current pitching guru Tom House intimated in 2005 that PED use was "widespread in baseball" in the 1960s and '70s

While not every claim Canseco ultimately made in his seminal 2004 tell-all, Juiced, nor every claim House made might be dead-on, suffice to say that reasonable observers can reasonably deduct that the Hall long ago welcomed someone who, at the least, "experimented" with steroid use. 

 Morgan is wrong because he cites the Mitchell Report as a legitimate source upon which a voter can pin Hall of Fame decisions. 

Ten years later, the Mitchell Report looks like the greatest and worst thing to happen to baseball.

The greatest, because it was a master PR stroke from Commissioner Bud Selig, the perfect act of contrition that got Congress off baseball's tail and actually shed some light on a portion of the game that was conducted largely in the corners of clubhouses, training rooms and workout facilities. Over time, fans began to regard whether a player cheated or not with just one question:

Was he named in the Mitchell Report? 

And that's why it's also one of the worst things to happen to baseball. Admittedly, it was an incomplete document, laced mostly with previously-revealed information unearthed by the news media and the feds. 

Certainly, a handful of players who ratted out peers, and a couple of shadow figures in Kirk Radomski and Brian McNamee gave us a few blaring headlines. But it represented a mere fraction of baseball's cheating scandal, giving cover to hundreds while assigning a disproportionate blame to the 86 players ensnared. 

If you're to make a voting decision based on PED use, the Mitchell Report is just a starting point, and far from a definitive tome. Most voters already knew that, and reacted accordingly. 

And Morgan is wrong because, after decades of insufferable takes and overblown discourse framed largely by age and socialization, time has allowed for nuance and reason into the never-ending steroid debate. 

Believe it or not, voters don't have to make an up-or-down decision on whether a player used or not. For many players, such as Barry Bonds, they can reasonably determine when a player might have started using and properly contextualize their achievements before likely usage and after

Sure, many fans and media members are dead against PED use. The steroid era certainly corroded the record books, artificially altered the game to render it almost unrecognizable, and turned likely journeymen into superstars. 

It is that part to which Morgan cannot relate. He did not face Bonds' predicament, seeing the landscape change around him to the point that one of the dozen greatest players of all time couldn't even crack the top 15 among home run hitters in a year the longball ostensibly "saved the game." 

Morgan says he and his fellow old-time Hall of Famers wouldn't show up to Cooperstown if Bonds got in. And that's a shame; the game is weaker when generations wall themselves off from those who came after. 

Sure, Morgan's generation might have been, by some definitions, purer than Bonds'. That doesn't mean it should be ignored, or that reasonable observers can't separate the generational wheat from the chemically enhanced chaff. 

Bonds will get the votes of many in my generation, a large swath who changed their minds on he and Roger Clemens and others. Morgan is entitled to feel differently, but is likely to end up on the wrong side of history. 

 

PHOTOS: 2018 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

 

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