Hall of Fame debates, celebrations and sorrows
Earlier this week, as before the Major League Baseball community headed Cooperstown for Sunday's Hall of Fame induction, the federal case against Barry Bonds was dropped.
How's that for timing? The issue of steroids and who belongs in the game's greatest shrine seemingly has become a year-round obsession, not just when the ballots go out and are counted each winter.
This shouldn't spoil the moment for Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio, who are rightfully being honored this weekend.
In The New York Times, Harvey Araton wasn't alone in calling for a reconsideration of Bonds -- he is the home run king, whether you like it or not -- who hasn't come close to reaching the voting threshold in his first two seasons of eligibility. In the column, Ithaca College professor sums up what continues to haunt the Lords of Baseball, and probably will unless the induction process is altered dramatically:
“It’s about an institution that wants to punish these guys, but was also an institution that more or less encouraged them by turning a blind eye to what they were doing to keep the cash registers ringing.”
While far too many writers were wasting their ballots in protest -- and in some cases refusing to fill them out -- they let the real culprits of this debacle off the hook. Retired commissioner Bud Selig faced precious little scrutiny compared to players, especially the likes of Bonds, with his "curmudgeonly personality," as Mosher put it.
The careers of Bonds and Roger Clemens, subject of another ill-fated federal investigation, were well underway when MLB finally implemented an anti-steroids policy in 2007. To continue to demonize them, and Mike Piazza -- who has never been formally implicated -- is to perpetuate a willfully abusive process that gives far too much power to entrenched, moralizing sportswriters on a high horse.
They are allowed to deny the proper historical context for these figures and the sport they purportedly revere. I doubt much will change when the Baseball Writers Association of America announces six months from now that Bonds and Clemens didn't come close again.
But one can hope the debate has taken on a necessary turn toward realism, and not punishment and fake mythology.
Profiling the inductees
In the Lansing State Journal, Chris Solari writes about John Smoltz' journey from the Michigan State campus to Cooperstown, and his stellar years with my Atlanta Braves. Cute kid photos, and an iconic one with a rookie Smoltz posing with Warren Spahn.
Juliet Macur of The New York Times recalls her odyssey in the Dominican Republic in pursuit of Pedro Martinez.
WTOP follows Randy Johnson in his new career, as a serious sports photographer. He admits his favorite subject, however, is live music shows. One of his photos from a tour with Rush landed on . . . wait for it . . . the cover of the Rolling Stone.
Newsday has another local-kid-done-good piece on Craig Biggio, who remains in Houston as an assistant to the GM with the surging Astros.
Hall of Fame hack seeking work
Another honoree in Cooperstown finds himself in an unusual position. For 36 years, Tom Gage dutifully covered the Tigers for The Detroit News, which abruptly dropped him from the beat right before spring training.
He quickly landed at Fox Sports Detroit, but three months later lost that job, as the Fox Sports top brass puled the plug on having writers for their regional cable outlets.
When Gage, 67, speaks Sunday as the winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, he will be officially unemployed. This has been the subject of several national pieces this week, but in this interview with NPR, he admitted he worried about the future of the beat writer, especially for a local entity:
"They'll make themselves available to the ESPNs of the world and the Fox networks of the world. But many times, oh, it's just the local beat guy, you know? I'll get him later. That type of thing."
He said he may sit down and write a book, something he hasn't done, despite crafting, by his count, 11 million words nearly every day in writing off 5,000 Detroit Tigers games.
I'd love to read it.
Sorrows for the Seau family
A change in induction policies for the Pro Football Hall of Fame mean that deceased players will no longer have anyone speaking on their behalf.
Sydney Seau, the daughter of Junior Seau, is formally listed as her father's presenter when he will be enshrined in Canton next month. But she won't speak. Instead, a highlight montage of her father's career will be displayed.
This has been especially painful for the Seau family, which has been outspoken about NFL concussion policies in the wake of his suicide, which they and many others believe stem from brain trauma suffered during his career.
At Bleacher Report, Mike Tanier argues that if Sydney can't speak, neither should any of the other inductees. This is hot, blistering, fantastic stuff:
"If silence is what the Pro Football Hall of Fame wants, then silence it should get. If you are asked to give Seau’s acceptance speech, turn the honor down. Tell them you have laryngitis. Tell them you have stage fright. Or tell them the truth that we are all thinking: that you believe Sydney Seau should be the one who gives the speech.
"That goes for all of you: all the old Chargers, the Patriots and Dolphins, the USC teammates and high school coaches from Oceanside. All of the people who loved Seau most of all can show their love with silence. Make the Pro Football Hall of Fame toss one of its own low-level functionaries on the stage to mumble off a Wikipedia entry while the audience shuffles and coughs. Or let’s turn a moment of silence into 15 minutes of silence we each keep in our own way: by remembering Seau’s greatness, lamenting his loss or remembering how evils of all kinds go unchecked when powerful people choose to ignore them."