vorosmccracken.com

Dan Connolly is unsure whether Mike Piazza meets his requirements as a Hall of Famer.

Now it’s easy to jump all over someone when they say something that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes sensible people spout nonsense. I myself once argued that Major League pitchers have very little difference between them on balls in play. Ah foolish youth.

Anyhow, his reasoning is what bothers me. I mean far be it from me to get in the way of a good mad on over steroids, but the arbitrary way I’m sensing folks want to start applying “adjustments” befuddles me. First of all, if we’re going to essentially ban all power hitters from the Hall of Fame from the “steroid era”, shouldn’t we first decide when that era started and ended? 1985? 1990? 1995? 1961? In high school, the kid in the locker next to mine talked about taking steroids (or wanting to take steroids, I’m a little fuzzy) and this was back to the mid and late 80s. I mean if a wrestler in a Catholic high school was looking to juice up, how are we so sure that George Bell and Andre Dawson and Jim Presley and the rest of the feared power hitters of the 80s weren’t roided up to the gills? I mean steroids as a PED goes all the way back to the 1950s. Do we deduct Mantle’s power numbers from being from the “steroid era?” Could Johnny Mize have been the first juicer (have you seen pictures of him, he was HUUUGGGE) and that explains the writers inexplicably failing to elect him?

That sounds like a silly argument, but then I’m responding to an argument about whether or not the greatest hitting catcher ever (by a landslide) is a Hall of Famer.