Manny Ramirez quit the game — a familiar move by Manny — rather than face the 100-game suspension for his second positive result in baseball’s testing program for performance-enhancing substances.
With that, another plaque at the National Baseball Hall of Fame will be missing — and that’s fine. There will be more than enough worthy plaques to display.
Hand-in-hand with the debate and discussion over baseball’s steroid era is the impact it has on the Hall of Fame. And while some believe the worst is in the past, we are just entering the time when it will engulf the attention to the Cooperstown shrine.
Mark McGwire has only been on the ballot five years. He has fallen far short of the required 75 percent of the vote by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, receiving just 20 percent in this past balloting, and will never get close to being elected to the Hall. But he will likely be able to sustain the needed five percent to stay on the ballot for the next 10 years to keep coming up for a vote, igniting the steroid debate every year.
Joining him next year will be his 1998 partner-in-crime Sammy Sosa, who also has been linked to steroid use. Sosa, like McGwire, will likely fall short of election but will probably remain on the ballot for the entire 15 years that a candidate can come up for a vote.
Rafael Palmeiro — certainly a worthy Hall of Fame candidate before he was suspended in 2005 for a positive test for performance-enhancing substances — was on the ballot for the first time this year and received only 11 percent of the vote. At some point, Palmeiro may not get the needed five percent to stay on the ballot for the next 15 years.
But there will be others to replace him and ramp up the heat on the issue of steroids and the Hall of Fame — most notably Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who become eligible for election in 2013. Ramirez will follow three years later.
So can the Hall afford to keep out some of the biggest stars? Will Cooperstown wind up compromising three of the six criteria for election — character, integrity and contributions to the game — because of the absence of a generation of stars?
No, because there will be those to embrace that also played during that time. It has already done that by establishing a permanent exhibit for Hank Aaron in Cooperstown, while Bonds — technically the all-time home run leader — has a ball with an asterisk on display to represent his career.
Any perceived void that exists by the absence of Bonds or Ramirez will be filled by the presence of Ken Griffey Jr. The empty — and hollow — plaque that might have hung in the Hall for Clemens will be filled by celebrating the greatness of Greg Maddux.
Embrace the good. Don’t compromise for the bad.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
