DanMargarita.com

Rice was elected in his 15th and final year on the ballot, in large part because his career batting numbers now seem more impressive as the recent sluggers of the game are being exposed as steroid cheats (Yeah, I’m talkin’ about you, Manny!).

Fans act shocked about these steroid revelations, but this doesn’t seem to be that recent a phenomenon. I recall being at a Red Sox-Oakland A’s playoff game in 1988 with Sox fans taunting A’s right fielder Jose Canseco with chants of “STE-ROIDS! STE-ROIDS!” Canseco took it in stride and jokingly showed off his biceps during a stoppage in play. I’m glad total strangers don’t give me the same treatment for my obvious physical attributes due to ingestion of various substances. It would be pretty embarrassing to have total strangers come up to me and yell, “DOUGH-NUTS! DOUGH-NUTS!”

Some have tried to associate past bad behavior with steroid use. It has often been noted that Babe Ruth performed on the field after spending the previous evening performing off the field. The Sultan of Swat was noted for his affinity for alcohol and his constant (and extremely successful) pursuit of women. To equate the Babe and steroid users is absurd, because I don’t think one can classify bootleg gin or gonorrhea as “performance enhancers.”

Former Major League pitcher Jim Bouton’s 1970 book Ball Four was the first to expose the dirty secrets of the national pastime in great detail, noting that payers often used amphetamines or “greenies” to help them get through the grueling grind of coast-to-coast travel and day games after night games, or for that matter, a four hour baseball game. Whether or not those greenies helped with one’s performance on the baseball diamond, I’m not knowledgeable enough to say. I will say that if I were to have open-heart surgery, I would not want my surgeon taking greenies to “enhance” his or her performance.

Slugger Rafael Palmeiro became best known not as a hitter, but as a spokesman for Viagra, which is sort of another type of “performing enhancing” drug. After vehemently denying steroid use to congress, Palmeiro tested positive for steroids. Knowing the effects that steroids have on the male reproductive system, it begins to answer why a healthy, well-conditioned 37-year-old professional athlete would need that type of performance enhancer.

Canseco was arrested last year while trying to sneak a female fertility drug into the country from Mexico, while Manny Ramirez was suspended 50 games for using the same drug to counter the effects of steroid use. Los Angeles Dodgers officials should have become suspicious when Ramirez ordered not only a protective cup, but also a sports bra.

One group of fans this would seem to effect would be baseball groupies. What’s the point of dating these guys if they’re physically incapable of doing anything off the field?

That players look for an edge, is nothing new. Author Zev Chafets notes in his new book Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame, that James “Pud” Galvin, a star pitcher in the 19th century who is in the Baseball HOF, ingested monkey testosterone in 1889. Galvin was known to throw a fastball, a change-up and on occasion, his own feces.

The substance didn’t seem to help him on the pitcher’s mound much, although it may have affected his health, perhaps the same effects as modern steroids, with Galvin dying at age 45, not to mention acquiring the nickname “Pud.”

This was long before the advent of the designated hitter and at the plate, Galvin was known as a “free swinger.” He’d swing at high pitches, he’d swing at low pitches and sometimes he’d swing from the hotel chandelier. But seriously folks…

Barry Bonds is said to have used Human Growth Hormone, which notably led to the increase of the size of his chest, his feet and his head. When a man in his 30’s is outgrowing his clothes, did no one become suspicious? At age 37, a man shouldn’t have to go shopping for back to school clothes.

There are some truly vile people that are in the Baseball Hall of Fame (Yeah, I’m talkin’ about you, Ty Cobb!), but the steroid cheats used substances that altered their bodies to such a degree as to greatly affect not only their performance, but the statistical record and thus the game itself and for my money, don’t belong in Cooperstown.

If you’ll excuse me now, I’m off to get my Boston Cream donut.