btbg

He should definitely be in the hall of fame as a player. The gambling was as a manager not as a player so it makes no sense to ban him as a player, but he is not the only person that baseball has gotten wrong. Mark Mcguire and Sammy Sosa immediately come to mind. They arent in the hall of fame because of using performance enhancing drugs which werent even against baseball rules when they did it. It makes no sense to penalize someone for something that wasnt made illegal until after they did it.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Give me a break. Everything that McGuire and Sosa did was against all fairness and sportsmanship in athletics. It was meant to get a leg up on the competition, unfairly. They got what they deserved. I feel more sorry for Clemens because he had a HOF career before he ever used performance enhancing drugs. BUT....

btbg

They didn't break the rules. How do you penalize someone who didn't break the rules. I was a collegiate athlete in the 1970s. I did not use performance enhancing drugs, but a huge percentage of the people I competed against did. It may not have been entirely fair, but it was legal. It wasn't just McGuire and Sosa who used performance enhancing drugs, lots of other major league players did as well. I don't feel sorry for Clemens, because he got caught after they were banned. The others didn't break any rules. That is on major league baseball, not on the athletes. Every athlete who ever competed at a high level did everything they could to gain an advantage. That's what athletes do. And, that's what they should do as long as they didn't break the rules. Major League baseball knew that players were using performance enhancing drugs and they did nothing about it because they wanted those players hitting all the homeruns to save the league while it was in serious decline. Then the players who saved the game are penalized when they didn't break the rules. Yeah, that's really fair. The whole thing is bull.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Your attitude is everything that is wrong in sports. And their records mean nothing. We all know they cheated.

btbg

They didn't cheat. There was no rule against what they did. Cheating is breaking the rules. Major League Baseball chose to not have a performance enhancing drug policy deliberately. They when it blew up in their faces they threw the players under the bus instead of owning what management did. MLB wanted people jacked up on steroids. It put people in the stands and they knew it. But, as soon as it came out then they just blamed the players that got caught or admitted to doing it instead of taking the blame for creating the atmosphere that caused it.

You can't blame players for trying to get ahead. Shoot, our college basketball team ate a steak dinner exactly four hours before each home game because the coaches believed it enhanced performance. It didn't, but they were trying to give us an edge. My college lifting partner took one round of steroids. When we started lifting together he weight 220 and I weighed 200 and our lifting was almost identical. After just six weeks of steroids by the time we graduated he weighed 280 and I weighed 200 still and he was lifting almost double what I was. The thing is, virtually everyone he was throwing the hammer against did the same thing. It was bad for people's health, but it didn't really make an uneven playing field because almost all the top throwers were doing it. And, it wasn't against the rules. Because of that all the records those people set still stand, because colleges and universities realized that those athletes were following the rules that were there at the time, so they did not penalize people who had followed the rules. Shoot, the dirty little secret in the MLB steroid scandal is that the strength coaches employed by the teams were the ones pushing the drugs.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

That's a cheater's attitude.

btbg

How is it cheating if it isnt against the rules?

SteveR Loc: Michigan

You know it's wrong. Just because baseball was not yet aware of something and had not made a rule about it doesn't make it right. Something that would give an individual an unfair advantage is morally wrong and against the spirit of the game. It doesn't have to be in the rules to be wrong and ultimately judged to be wrong and against the interests of the game.

btbg

Boy are you naive. Baseball wanted it. They needed home runs to get crowds in the park and to get television contracts.

They knew what people were doing and were the last sport to ban it. They were years after most sports.

An unfair advantage is when one person is doing something against the rules. It is not an unfair advantage when everyone has the same opportunity and its legal.

Example. Should protien suplements be illegal. They help with weight gain and building muscle mass and they were unavailable in the 70s. Or how about creatin? Also helps build muscle mass, no negative side effects when properly used? Both products are legal so should tje athletes who use them be penalized for doing so? By your logic they should be banned from sport.

Should the bycycles that Australia just paid $50,000 apiece for for their national team for the upcpming Olympics be ilegal because they are lighter and faster than some other teams have?

Sports should be fair, but fair means everyone has to play by the same rules. It doesnt mean that you shouldnt do everything you can within the rules to improve your chances of winning.