Writers' roid rage hurting Bagwell's chances

Steroids will hang over baseball now and perhaps forever. That's the message from the 2011 Hall of Fame balloting.

Jeff Bagwell was caught in the middle of a fight he didn't pick and a debate he can't win. He knew from the moment his name appeared on the ballot that his career would become a referendum on steroids.

That he was a Hall of Fame baseball player is virtually beyond debate. He can at least take some comfort in that part of it. He knows how good he was, and even if he won't come out and say it, he knows he should have been a slam-dunk, first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Where do we begin? He's among the four best first basemen of all-time, right behind Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Albert Pujols, according to Rob Neyer, citing the new-age Wins Above Replacement statistic.

Bagwell's career OPS of .948 is higher than that of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Frank Robinson. To have crossed the 1,500 threshold in both runs and RBIs should automatically punch his ticket to Cooperstown.

He drew at least 101 walks for seven straight seasons and had six straight years of at least 30 home runs, 100 RBIs and 100 runs. He was a great baserunner and a superior defensive player.

He was a winner, too, helping the Astros to six playoff berths in a nine-year stretch. Few players have been more highly regarded by teammates or respected by opponents.

In an era when steroids cheapened the numbers, Bagwell was a dominant player. So there.

Now to the reason he was named on only 242 of the 581 ballots and fell well short of the 75 percent (436 votes) standard. Steroids kept him out. There can be no other explanation. Some voters decided Bagwell either used steroids or may have used steroids.

Is there proof? Absolutely none, other than the fact he lifted weights, got big and hit a bunch of home runs.

He never tested positive for steroids, as far as I know. He was never named in any of the investigations into steroid use or distribution. No teammate ever accused him of using them.

I'm one of the voters who has said he'll never vote for a steroid guy. But I'm also not going to throw a net over an entire generation. Some of them did it the right way.

Will I end up voting on some guys who used steroids? Probably. Will I feel terrible? No, I won't.

I'm voting on the information I have at the time. I'm not looking back, and I'm not going to engage in a speculative witch hunt.

Rather than play this guessing game, why don't we just exclude every player who performed at a high level between 1988 and 2002? That may not cover 'em all, but it'll come close.
Union blew it in '94

If Bagwell is angry at someone — and he said he isn't — it should be the union that protected the cheats. His union.

Baseball's owners first put steroid testing on the table in the 1994 labor negotiations. Union leaders rejected it, and at a time when the game was being smothered by economic problems, owners didn't push hard enough.

But in 2002, they did. One owner, Baltimore's Peter Angelos, had a loud, profane and angry discussion with Gene Orza of the Major League Players Association. Angelos told Orza that this time there'd be no giving in, that steroid testing would be in the plan or the players were welcome to go out on strike.

By then, the damage was done. Numbers sacred to the game had been diminished to the point of irrelevance. Some of baseball's greatest stars —Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire — would see their reputations irreparably harmed.

Baseball didn't suffer financially, but something a lot worse was lost. Baseball's good name was damaged.

The NFL has had its issues with performance-enhancing substances, but football is held to a different standard. For some reason, fans aren't bothered by cheating in that sport.

Commissioner Bud Selig often has spoken of baseball's place as a social institution. The major leagues integrated clubhouses before Martin Luther King Jr. took one step in the cause of civil rights.
Lasting damage

In this one area, baseball failed badly, and that damage will be a long time going away. This year, Bonds and Clemens could go on trial for perjury in connection with steroid allegations.

Other names are sure to leak out in the years to come. With each development will come a revisiting of the entire era and additional suspicion about who else did or didn't juice.

Does Bagwell deserve a presumption of innocence? Sure, he does. Can he do anything to prove his innocence? Nope.

All he can hope is that at some point players will be judged by the facts instead of the presumed facts.

Those of us who came to love the guy can be com-forted by the thought that we were lucky enough to watch him play for 15 years.

We knew we were watching greatness. We knew he defined everything pro sports should be about. No plaque in Cooperstown can ever diminish what he meant to our city.