Baseball hall of fame inductees

[nine_deuce]

Do you think Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens or anyone else who has been busted for using steroids should be allowed into the hall of fame?

I don't. Reason being, they cheated to get the numbers they have. I'm sure more people, probably even some that are in the hall have done it without getting caught. But, I don't feel you should be allowed into such a prestigious place having cheated to achieve goals honest people set.

Discuss...

And for the record, NO ONE will EVER come close to touching Cal Ripken's Iron Man record.

[puzzlevil]

Bonds and Clemens should be first ballot HOF'ers. Look at their level of performance over their entire career. When Clemens pitched for Toronto nobody wanted to face him, he won 20 games in the late 80's and would have won 20 games again almost 20 years later with Houston if they had any bats. Bonds was a beast his whole career, he's a 40/40 man multiple Gold Glove and MVP's throughout his entire career and yes was still hitting 40+hr late in his career but remember thats when we went from the hot ball era (when everybody was jacking runs) to the "steroids" ear. Given that 90% of MLB players were using some type of PED (no not proven but then again nobody believed Canseco either), it can be said that everyone relevant was cheating and being that it was part of the game for that period Bonds, Clemens and other great players who played through this period or who are linked to PED's should not be blackballed from the HOF. Actually Clemens and Bonds were already HOF'ers even before the era of PED's. If the PED players (as people like to call them) are not allowed into the Hall then players like Ruth should be removed since he played during a time that organized crime controlled the game of baseball. It was said that there wasn't a pitch that Ruth couldn't take yard but thats its because the opposing pitchers were being influenced (either through money or threats) to throw to him. Sound absurd, possibly but so are PED's turning HOF players into players that shouldn't be in the HOF. There is probably really good arguments for alot of players to not get into the HOF but Clemens and Bonds have had legendary careers. It's too bad that they will be forever tainted.

[Jarrett]

They're hall of famers from an achievement standpoint, with or without the PEDs. The fact that the Rocket is still pitching at a somewhat high level shows just how good he is. They made stupid decisions, and their attitudes made it much worse. But they haven't been "proven" of anything and if we expect the justice system, informal or formal, to work then we have to let it apply evenly across the board.

I still hope someone breaks the all-time home run record soon, though. Ryan Braun may do it, but he's been tainted now, too. Bautista's too old, Ryan Howard can't stay off of the operating table, Hamilton seems to fizz out at the end of the season... Maybe Miggy can give us a clean record. Until we find that he's on something too. Besides alcohol, that is.