John Fay Abstains from HOF Voting to Avoid Casting Votes for Bonds and Clemens

[mbgrayson]

Originally Posted by westofyou

And on his plaque I'd like them to post Rule 21

Why just on Rose's plaque? Rule 21 is the rule that would be used to cover steroids too:

Rule 21(f) OTHER MISCONDUCT. Nothing herein contained shall be construed as exclusively defining or otherwise limiting acts, transactions, practices or conduct not to be in the best interests of Baseball; and any and all other acts, transactions, practices or conduct not to be in the best interests of Baseball are prohibited and shall be subject to such penalties, including permanent ineligibility, as the facts in the particular case may warrant.

This idea that Rose was the only one who 'broke the only rule posted on MLB clubhouses' is truly getting old...Look at the full text of Rule 21: it is way more than just gambling....

[jojo]

Originally Posted by westofyou

Nah he's a great player

This is really who the above statement is about

I thought he was talking about Babe Ruth.

[RedsBaron]

I have never been persuaded by the argument that because Hank Aaron allegedly took greenies late in his career or that Willie Mays supposedly had a bottle of red juice in his locker, then the evident PEDS use by more recent players should be forgiven and ignored.
Going 60 mph in a 55 mph zone and going 120 mph in a 15 mph school zone are both speeding but are hardly equivalent. I would not get out of shape if the first driver wasn't pulled over by the police or escaped with a warning. I can't say the same about the second driver.

[jojo]

Originally Posted by RedsBaron

I have never been persuaded by the argument that because Hank Aaron allegedly took greenies late in his career or that Willie Mays supposedly had a bottle of red juice in his locker, then the evident PEDS use by more recent players should be forgiven and ignored.
Going 60 mph in a 55 mph zone and going 120 mph in a 15 mph school zone are both speeding but are hardly equivalent. I would not get out of shape if the first driver wasn't pulled over by the police or escaped with a warning. I can't say the same about the second driver.

There are lot of arguements on both sides of this issue that are reasonable but this one just isn't very consistent.

We have an era that was characterized by chemical enhancement. Bonds and Clemens are the poster boys for the era because they were the best of their generation.

Sportswriters want Bonds and Clemens to pay for the sins of an era for which there is no definitive beginning or end after the industry largely ignored the issue of PEDs for most of the history of PEDs use.

[RedsBaron]

Notwithstanding my prior post, I am convinced that eventually PEDS use will not be a bar to induction into the Hall of Fame. There are too many known or suspected PEDS users to keep them all out and once one is inducted I expect the dam will have been burst.
To me Bonds and Clemens are twins of a sort. If suspicions as to when each player began taking PEDS are true (Bonds after the '98 season in reaction to McGwire and Sosa, Clemens after he left the Red Sox), both players had already had a HOF worthy career by that point. I think they both go in or neither one goes in.
Once one PEDS user is inducted, the rationale for automatically excluding PEDS users collapses and will then leave us with the impossible task of deciding who would have been a Hall of Famer even without PEDS and who would not have been.
It doesn't bother me if all PEDS users are kept out of the HOF. Their exclusion would not mean that their careers and baseball history are being ignored by the HOF. Pete Rose isn't in the HOF but photos and other memorabilia of Rose, including his uniform, are displayed in the HOF. However, I do not expect they will all be kept out, so the debate sometimes seems pointless to me.

[traderumor]

Originally Posted by jojo

Simply assuming a normal career trajectory after Pittsburgh puts him in the HOF.

And some logic professor just plucked this statement out for an example of "begging the question." Can I add you know what they say about assuming? Your responses are normally pretty solid, but this argument is very, very weak.

"Normal career trajectory" would be a wax nose term, plus at what age do you start calculating "normal career trajectory?" Here, before he left Pittsburgh? What about when he was 25? What do we do with the hundreds of folks (i.e. Albert Belle) you could say that about? How do you consider "normal career trajectory" when we don't know when the PEDs usage started? It could have started in Pittsburgh, after all, when his OPS jumped 200 points after a 700s OPS season in his mid 20s? Do we have a PEDs fudge factor to put into the "normal career trajectory" blender?

Of course, these are all questions voters should be trying to answer. Fay says "heck, I don't know, I'm just gonna abstain, da yuck, da yuck, da yuck."

[jojo]

Originally Posted by traderumor

And some logic professor just plucked this statement out for an example of "begging the question." Can I add you know what they say about assuming?

You can ad whatever you want but it wasn't an example of begging the question. Applying normal aging curves to project performance is an established technique.

Assuming Bonds wouldn't age normally in a scenario where baseball was clean actually requires justification.

[westofyou]

Originally Posted by RedsBaron

Notwithstanding my prior post, I am convinced that eventually PEDS use will not be a bar to induction into the Hall of Fame. There are too many known or suspected PEDS users to keep them all out and once one is inducted I expect the dam will have been burst.
To me Bonds and Clemens are twins of a sort. If suspicions as to when each player began taking PEDS are true (Bonds after the '98 season in reaction to McGwire and Sosa, Clemens after he left the Red Sox), both players had already had a HOF worthy career by that point. I think they both go in or neither one goes in.
Once one PEDS user is inducted, the rationale for automatically excluding PEDS users collapses and will then leave us with the impossible task of deciding who would have been a Hall of Famer even without PEDS and who would not have been.
It doesn't bother me if all PEDS users are kept out of the HOF. Their exclusion would not mean that their careers and baseball history are being ignored by the HOF. Pete Rose isn't in the HOF but photos and other memorabilia of Rose, including his uniform, are displayed in the HOF. However, I do not expect they will all be kept out, so the debate sometimes seems pointless to me.

Exactly how I see it

[traderumor]

Originally Posted by jojo

You can ad whatever you want but it wasn't an example of begging the question. Applying normal aging curves to project performance is an established technique.

Assuming Bonds wouldn't age normally in a scenario where baseball was clean actually requires justification.

You also claim WAR is a valid statistical representation, so your conclusion means little to me.

[jojo]

Originally Posted by RedsBaron

Notwithstanding my prior post, I am convinced that eventually PEDS use will not be a bar to induction into the Hall of Fame. There are too many known or suspected PEDS users to keep them all out and once one is inducted I expect the dam will have been burst.
To me Bonds and Clemens are twins of a sort. If suspicions as to when each player began taking PEDS are true (Bonds after the '98 season in reaction to McGwire and Sosa, Clemens after he left the Red Sox), both players had already had a HOF worthy career by that point. I think they both go in or neither one goes in.
Once one PEDS user is inducted, the rationale for automatically excluding PEDS users collapses and will then leave us with the impossible task of deciding who would have been a Hall of Famer even without PEDS and who would not have been.
It doesn't bother me if all PEDS users are kept out of the HOF. Their exclusion would not mean that their careers and baseball history are being ignored by the HOF. Pete Rose isn't in the HOF but photos and other memorabilia of Rose, including his uniform, are displayed in the HOF. However, I do not expect they will all be kept out, so the debate sometimes seems pointless to me.

To me it's pretty easy to sort out. Who was the best of their generation? It's largely the appropriate and the same standard applied to players of any generation. The issue to me would be are there any players being unfairly kept out. In other words, are there marginal HOFers who were clean beyond a shadow of a doubt but who will be kept out by the PED use of others?

[jojo]

Originally Posted by traderumor

You also claim WAR is a valid statistical representation, so your conclusion means little to me.

You're free to obfuscate the point but if you want to but if you try to discredit an argument by attacking the poster, don't get your feathers ruffled when someone calls you on it like in this case where you're clearly profiting a logical fallacy.

[*BaseClogger*]

Originally Posted by jojo

Sportswriters want Bonds and Clemens to pay for the sins of an era for which there is no definitive beginning or end after the industry largely ignored the issue of PEDs for most of the history of PEDs use.

This is the biggest thing for me--where were these tough-guy sportswriters taking a tough stand against PEDs *while* it was happening? It looks like a cover-your-ass move by them now because they completely ignored the situation as it unfolded. It was their responsibility to inform the public of this sort of behavior because they were in those locker rooms and they failed at it miserably all in exchange for some cheeky quotes...

[Chip R]

Originally Posted by *BaseClogger*

This is the biggest thing for me--where were these tough-guy sportswriters taking a tough stand against PEDs *while* it was happening? It looks like a cover-your-ass move by them now because they completely ignored the situation as it unfolded. It was their responsibility to inform the public of this sort of behavior because they were in those locker rooms and they failed at it miserably all in exchange for some cheeky quotes...

Sportswriters - by nature - are hypocrites. Their readers don't have long memories and they can be for something one day and against it the next.

[oneupper]

Originally Posted by *BaseClogger*

This is the biggest thing for me--where were these tough-guy sportswriters taking a tough stand against PEDs *while* it was happening? It looks like a cover-your-ass move by them now because they completely ignored the situation as it unfolded. It was their responsibility to inform the public of this sort of behavior because they were in those locker rooms and they failed at it miserably all in exchange for some cheeky quotes...

I don't know. Is is really the responsibility of the sportswriter to uncover and denounce fraud, risking his/her career and livelihood?
Sure, its great if they do (and are right), but does it fall on them?

A reason you have regulators is for whistleblowers to keep their necks.

Frankly, if we're going to look at that way, the players should have been policing themselves better. A lot of misplaced solidarity went on. No one wanted to be the rat.

[traderumor]

Originally Posted by jojo

To me it's pretty easy to sort out. Who was the best of their generation? It's largely the appropriate and the same standard applied to players of any generation. The issue to me would be are there any players being unfairly kept out. In other words, are there marginal HOFers who were clean beyond a shadow of a doubt but who will be kept out by the PED use of others?

Actually was showing how you went from begging the question to an appeal to authority---the authority being yourself.