The Moral Compass

[DOUGHBOYS]

Warning: When I get passionate about something, I get a little wordy.
This is a little wordy.

I've had my mind diverted a little bit from fantasy baseball lately. A tough thing to do.
I Blame it on the elections and some personal stuff going on around me. I won't talk about the personal stuff, because it involves health, and I know there is nothing worse in this life than hearing my Aunt Ruth giving me a rundown of her ailments.

Two words have come into play for me lately- Moral Compass.
Each person's moral compass is different. For one person, groping a stripper is perfectly alright.
For another, the act of even entering a strip club is appalling.
(I swear this post will be talking about baseball in a minute, bear with me)
Locally, we had an election, where a guy ran for state representative. This guy was a scumbag. A former deputy sheriff, he was fired for abusing the time clock, doctoring paperwork, and when he had a case, several key items ended up missing.
The old joke is that if you're fired from a job, you run for political office.
He did.
He won the Republican primary because there wasn't much interest from other folks in the seat. He won the election, partially because his opponent ran a horrible campaign, but more because of the BIG R by his name on the ballot. Republicans run 3-1 where I live.
One way of looking at it, is that this guy joins all the other scumbag politicians. That seems too easy though.
I look at it that folks are just too damned lazy. Too lazy to even find out about a candidate and preferring to rely on his party. Both parties are broken, but too few people care, and both parties know it, so the beat goes on.
On the other side of the coin, the PEOPLE decided.

All this prefaces my about face on the Hall of Fame.
(I told you I'd get back to baseball)
I have sent many letters imploring the Hall of Fame to include Joe Jackson. I know they'll go into a manila envelope that is titled- 'Joe Jackson Sympathist', but I don't care.
I've felt Joe Jackson was railroaded by a new Commisioner of baseball, eager to make his mark, and at the same time, protect players like Tris Speaker and Rogers Hornsby who were members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Who also protected Speaker (again) and Ty Cobb who were prone to bet on baseball.

Pete Rose was deemed un- Hall of Fame worthy for betting on the game.
Rose betting on the game came at a different time then that of Cobb and Speaker.
Cobb and Speaker did not have to go out of their way to bet on games. Back in their day, gambling among attendees of a baseball game was normal. Some Mafia splinter groups would attend games for the soul purpose of 'taking action'.
Ball players were part of that action.
Rose went out of his way to bet on games. Having to use a phone or runner to lay down a bet. A bet that was made in a time where bets were not common.
Still, Rose did the same thing as players already in the Hall.

Players have taken 'greenies', ped's, steroids, alcohol, tobacco, sugar, green M & M's, supplements, energy drinks, just about anything to improve their games. Some of these things are legal, some are not. They are all products of their time. If steroids were around in the 20's, the game would have had the same problem as they did from the 90's to now.
It's human. Players want to make themselves better.
I had a minor league friend who was told by his coach at AA that if he didn't take an illegal substance to help with physical skills that he'd be out of baseball in two years.
He asked, 'What would you do?'
I couldn't answer him. I wasn't in that position. It's a hell of a position to be in.
Only he could answer what to do.
And, just for your curiosity, he did not take steroids and he was out of baseball the next year.
No fairy tale ending there.

Steroids and PED's have become a taboo type of subject now.
Nobody likes them. The baseball record books have been affected. And the largest part of our baseball watching time will go down in history as the 'steroid era'. We didn't sign up for that.
I still think of the seasonal home run record as 61 set by Roger Maris in '61.
The best at using steroids was Barry Bonds. Bonds took a speed/power game and made himself into the most powerful hitter in baseball history.
He was better than Ruth, Aaron, Mays....anybody, but he had to be on steroids to do it.
And for that, there must be a penalty.
For baseball purists, that penalty will come from the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame not only takes a man's accomplishments on the field in baseball into account, but also what he does off the field.
How do characters like Cobb, Speaker, and Hornsby get into the Hall?
Because the press has changed.
The press used to mask what sports heroes did off the field.
The 1910's, 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, and 1960's all saw writers who rode the same trains and planes with ball players. They sat at the same card tables on the road. They frequented the same bars.
There was a gentleman's code that the writer did not write anything 'bad' about a ball player.

Each generation has something that makes it easier or harder for a ball player.
Babe Ruth played with inferior equipment. The bats were not made of the same wood today. Plus the bats today are varnished over and over again making them harder.
Babe Ruth played in parks where center field fences were hard to see and some ball parks had no fences at all.
He played in a time where it was where the ball landed, not where it left the park before it was called fair or foul.
He had to hit a spitball. (Although this pitch was outlawed, it was used by Gaylord Perry and others later....Perry resides in the Hall of Fame)
He traveled for many hours by train.

At the same time, Ruth played against players who were all white.
He played in some parks where he could shake hands with a person in the right field grandstand.
Ground rule doubles were home runs.
He didn't have to hit many sliders.
The furthest west, Ruth had to travel was to St. Louis.

The point is that all baseball players are victims of their own time frame.
The time frame is not the player's choosing.
Ruth was never confronted with the choice of using a Superman pill or not.

Kicking somebody out of the Hall of Fame will never be done.
The Hall has come too far for that.
The Hall of Fame has even become too dignified for that.
It would rock a boat that does not need rocking.

Treating black folks like second class citizens and betting on games was a product of Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb's times.
For the Hall to admit that there are nefarious characters within their walls would be counter productive to their process.
Yet, they keep Joe Jackson out because of one man's decision.
A man who just happens to be in the Hall of Fame.

I write this post that has almost become a novella, because I have changed my opinion on who belongs in the Hall and who doesn't.
Before, I looked at the likes of Rose, and Bonds, and Clemens and thought them as not Hall of Fame worthy.
They're jerks. They bet or cheated.
But, I looked at myself and decided, who am I to judge?
Remember, we live in a time where a possible felon can run for office, and win.

Baseball uses the Hall of Fame as a father used a spanking stick.
These players made Major League Baseball oodles of money through more fan attendance, only to spank them later with the Hall of Fame.
The Hall of Fame, when I grew up, was a reward for the most talented of players.
Now, it is a moral compass.

Rose, Bonds, and Clemens captivated us with their play.
They may at the same time, cause us to roll our eyes and curl our lip at what we know they did.
But on the field, they were magnificent.
The Hall is already tainted by players who were not great citizens.
Although, Ripken and Gehrig and everything apple pie comes to mind when pondering the Hall of Fame, it isn't.
Let Joe Jackson in. Let Pete Rose in. Let the best steroid players in.
These players were victims of their own times and minds.
We don't pay to see their minds. We don't pay to see a personality on the field. We don't care.
We pay to see them play the game of baseball.
They were the best on the baseball field of their times.
It is called the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Some of the articles used by Jackson, Rose, Bonds, and Clemens are already in the Hall.
To not induct the men who used those tools, but use the tools themselves as a drawing card, at the least, invites hypocrisy.

The Hall of Fame is the final frontier for a ball player.
A reflection of what he did on the ball field.
Not, what he did off.
The Hall of Fame is for those that excelled on the field.
The fan will decide on how each player obtained their greatness.
Leave the moral compass to the fan.