Some Love for Big Mac

I'm not sure what triggered it, but it seems baseball pundits are getting all bent out of shape this week over the possibility of Mark McGwire being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Why? I'm not totally sure.

Okay, well, if you read some opinions from the NY Times, Chicago Sun-Times, or even ESPN.com you might get an idea of where they're coming from... but the comparisons they're making are ludicrous.

Barry Bonds? Not really. McGwire retired long before the BALCO investigation, or any semblance of a testing system in MLB. In short, for as much as I defend Bonds for not having broken any rules, McGwire retired before there were any allegations whatsoever. He was universally loved, as he seemed like a good guy. Okay, so the dude likely consumed enough Creatine and HGH to make anyone be able to crush homers like it was going out of style, but the fact remains, he still holds the MLB rookie record with 49 homeruns, so it's not like he even made the ridiculous jump Bonds did.

Dave Kingman? I'm not even going to give this the respect of tearing it apart.

People need to calm the fuck down. The guy hit a boatlod of homers, ending with 583, or something, and he didn't break any rules. As far as we can tell, the pitchers were into all the performance enhancing drugs, too, to recover quicker. So everyone was "cheating", as reporters like to call it nowadays.

The other big issue is that if he does get inducted, he'll go in alongside Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn. Two "good guys" if ever there were. Gwynn? I'll buy he was clean (although I contend that this should even be on our radar as some kind of "requirement"). However, if Ripken didn't take any performance enhancers to set the consecutive games played streak, I'll eat my fucking shoe. The guy played shortstop, and if anything hurt his team by never taking a day off to recover. His stats regularly plummeted at teh end of the season, cuz the dude was wiped. He caught (and passed) a guy that played first base. That's the next best thing to being a DH. It's where they put old sluggers who can't run anymore, or big young guys who can't field worht a shit.

But I digress....

They're saying that having McGwire there will create a media circus, as he has "gone into hiding", or whatever. Anything I've read about him indicates that he's a quiet, private guy, who likely looked forward to retiring into obscurity. Writers are implying that he's hiding from the media, and while that's possible, it's not likely the whole story.

















Bottom Line: The dude hit a shitload of homeruns, and along with another alleged "doper", Sammy Sosa, saved baseball in 1998 with their fabled homerun chase, both eclipsing Roger Maris' single-season record of 61 (Mac with 70, Sammy with 66), and pretty much saving MLB fan interest in the process. He didn't break any rules. He should be in the HOF.

No quetions asked.