Shout Out To The Dude Who Used The First Question To Ask Mike Piazza Straight Up If He Used Steroids
There’s a reason why nobody hits home runs that go that far anymore, and I think the guy who asked this question might’ve been headed in the right direction in order to get to the bottom of this conundrum.
Listen, I don’t mean to single out Mike Piazza. I like Mike Piazza. He seems like a great guy, and I loved watching him play. It’s more to address the Hall of Fame voting process. Baseball fans have to deal with this shit twice a year, and every time voting season comes around and then induction weekend later that summer, we have the Same. Fucking. Discussions. Every year. Every year! Who did it? Who didn’t do it? Would you vote for a guy who did? Would you vote for certain guys who did, but not all guys who did? Would you vote for a guy who you thought did, but nobody could ever prove they did?
Some people actually ENJOY that conversation. It reminds me too much of politics, and I hate politics. There’s no right or wrong answer, because it’s all up to your perception and how you view what the Hall of Fame should be, so people just argue about what they’re passionate about until they’re blue in the face and pass out. The PED connection in regards to Hall of Fame voting has been a thing for quite some time now, so everybody already has their minds made up on how they feel about it. I don’t think you’re convincing anybody to change their stance at this point.
If you had asked me a few years ago, I would’ve said no. Nope. No PED guys get into the Hall of Fame. You took a risk, you took PEDs to become a better baseball player, whether it was for the benefit of the team, whether it was to get on a level playing field because everybody else was doing it, or whether it was for selfish reasons like earning more money and fame, or all of the above. Everybody had their reasons. But at one time, I thought that that was the tradeoff. You got your money, you got your fame, you got your roided out Baseball-Reference page. But you don’t get the Hall.
I’ve backed off of that stance a little bit since then for a couple of reasons. First, I love the game of baseball and its history. The Hall of Fame is a baseball museum. You can’t just have a baseball museum and not include an entire era. You can’t. Fans aren’t stupid. For the most part, they know who used, and the players who used will have to spend the rest of their lives living with the guilt of knowing how they got into the Hall of Fame, because it’s obvious for a majority of them.
Now, that doesn’t mean that I want to put them all in. I’m a no on Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Thanks for saving the game in the summer of ’98. Mean it. But I don’t think either of those guys sniff Hall of Fame credentials without the sauce, and the voters seem to agree, as McGwire is now off the ballot having failed to get elected in ten tries, while Sosa only got 7% of the vote in his fifth attempt on the most recent ballot.
I’m a yes on Barry Bonds and I’m a yes on Roger Clemens for two reasons. First, the obvious. Bonds, in my opinion, is the greatest baseball player of all-time. Better than Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, you name it. Bonds used a shit ton of steroids, that much we know. But, according to Jose Canseco, who has been on top of the steroid scandal in the MLB since day one, there are already players — not playER, playerS plural — in the Hall of Fame, who he knows used performance-enhancing drugs. If your mission is to keep them all out, you’ve already failed. Again, that doesn’t mean put them all in. But you can’t have a baseball museum without arguably the greatest player of all-time, who is also the Home Run King, and you can’t have a baseball museum without arguably the greatest pitcher of all-time, Roger Clemens, who has more Cy Young awards than anybody in history.
This brings me back to my main point. Good for the dude who just came right out and asked Piazza point blank if he used steroids. Obviously he wasn’t going to answer that question, but it would make the voting process so much less aggravating if it wasn’t such a witch hunt or a guessing game. Hall of Fame weekend used to be something that baseball fans looked forward to. Now, whenever I see that induction weekend is coming up, or that it’s ballot season, I just roll my eyes and think, here we fuckin’ go again.
By the way, the answer to the question is yes. Piazza did use performance-enhancing drugs, and he admitted it in his autobiography. People forget that. Piazza openly admitted to using Androstenedione, or “Andro”, which is the same drug that McGwire admitted to using in 1998 when it was seen in his locker by a reporter. In that same autobiography, Piazza says he never used steroids, just Andro. That sucks, because the US government classifies Andro as a steroid. Whoops.