TAKE a seat in the corner, Big Mac, and let the baseball world pass you by – maybe forever. You have all those home runs, but your honor is lost.
The baseball writers threw a fastball right past Mark McGwire yesterday. Good for them. They recognized that Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn stand for everything that’s right about the game and voted the two single-team-superstar ambassadors into the Hall of Fame in overwhelming numbers.
Honor Ripken. Honor Gwynn.
McGwire, whose career has been tarnished by accusations of steroid use, earned this dishonor.
Big Mac doesn’t look so big anymore. He told Congress he has no desire to talk about the past. There were no apologies, no explanations. Fine, the voters said, if he doesn’t want to talk about his past, why should we honor it?
Having McGwire ride along in the Ripken, Gwynn limo to Cooperstown would have cheapened their legendary journey. We’ll see if the writers keep McGwire out of the Hall for the long haul.
They spoke loud and clear yesterday, giving McGwire and his 583 lifetime home runs, seventh best in major-league history, a 23.5 percent vote total. Ripken received 98.53 percent of the vote, the third-highest percentage in history, and Gwynn wound up with an impressive 97.61 percentage.
If you go by numbers, McGwire figured to be a slam-dunk, but the accusations of Bash Brother Jose Canseco and McGwire’s embarrassingly weak testimony to Congress all caught up to him yesterday.
McGwire is living in baseball exile.
This may be a one-year slap on the wrist, or it could be much more. It could be the start of a steroid backlash. McGwire is the first target. What about Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa? Then there’s Barry Bonds. What does his Hall of Fame future hold? Bonds could break Hank Aaron’s all-time home run mark on July 29, the day Ripken and Gwynn are inducted into Cooperstown.
McGwire’s defenders say he wasn’t the only one suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs, and there is no “CSI: MLB” evidence, why penalize poor Mark? Look what he did for baseball in 1998, putting the game on his cartoon characterlike broad back, carrying it to success. That was the year McGwire shattered Roger Maris’ single-season home-run mark, blasting 70, the year we all looked the other way.
You have to wonder how the Maris family is feeling today about all this. Randy Maris, Roger’s son, did not return a phone call seeking comment on the McGwire saga.
I did not vote for McGwire. I do not plan to vote for him next year. Right now, I’d just as soon send a bottle of andro to the Hall of Fame. Put a Cardinals cap on it and ship it off to Cooperstown.
Gwynn said he thinks McGwire should be in the Hall.
“I really believe he deserves it,” said the man who won eight batting titles.
Ripken steered clear of the subject, saying, “I don’t think it’s my place to actually cast judgment.”
Goose Gossage, who finished third in the voting, with 71.2 percent, a tick below the 75 percent needed for election, said he is friends with McGwire, but as it stands now, he agrees with the voters.
“There are too many clouds hanging over McGwire’s head,” Gossage said. “I don’t think he deserves to go in until this whole thing is cleared up.”
Gossage said the same thing about Bonds, and the others in question.
“I hate to see this happen to baseball, but there are too many great players in the Hall of Fame and too many numbers at risk,” Gossage said, echoing the sentiments of Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. “I don’t think anyone should go in under a cloud of suspicion. No one is bigger than the game.”
Unless McGwire comes up with some answers, that big cloud of suspicion will follow Big Mac around the rest of his life.
That is his Hall of Shame legacy.
