Bill James Gets it Wrong on the Issue of Cooperstown and the ‘Roids, Part 2

Baseball’s preeminent statistical expert has gives us his thoughts on the issue of steroids and baseball and there’s a lot to talk about as a result.  This is part two of my look at his paper titled, “Cooperstown and the ‘Roids.”

James gives us this mind boggling passage, “The discrimination against PED users in Hall of Fame voting rests upon the perception that this was cheating.  But is it cheating if one violates a rule that nobody is enforcing, and which one may legitimately see as being widely ignored by those within the competition?”  This is another, “Wow!” moment. As in, “Wow, WTF is he talking about? Where has he been!”

James doesn’t seem to remember that the league wasn’t able to/didn’t test for steroids until recently, and cannot and will likely never be able to test for human growth hormone. Furthermore, regardless of whether or not the league has the ability to test for every PED, if MLB states that the use of these substances is prohibited, any player who uses them is breaking the rules.  James also doesn’t bring up the fact that not one baseball player, and to my knowledge, not one athlete has come out and admitted to using steroids and/or said that using them during the years when everyone was doing it, wasn’t cheating.

As a matter of fact, players have gone to great lengths to hide their usage from the authorities, their peers and fans, from wagging their fingers in denial at congressional hearings to telling people they didn’t want to talk about the past.

Towards the end of the paper James mentions how Will Clark was a great player who was historically under-rated because, “his numbers were dimmed by comparison to the steroid-inflated numbers that came just after him. Will Clark in the pre-steroid era, was a much better player than Rafael Palmeiro.”

James goes on to say that he would not argue with a person who did not support a player for the Hall of Fame because he was a steroid user and, therefore, a cheater. We writes that Will Clark has a “right to feel cheated out of a fair chance to compete for honors in his time, and, if you chose to look at it from the standpoint of Will Clark, I don’t think that you are wrong to do so.”

James writes that he doesn’t believe “history will look at this issue from the standpoint of Will Clark.”  The sad thing is that Bill James is one of the few people in the position to prevent/correct this injustice.  Who better to “man up,” and make the case for the non-cheaters than the leading baseball statistician of all-time?

It’s sad that a noted expert like Bill James chose not to take a stand and call PED users cheaters.  I don’t say this because I believe Clemens, Bonds, Sosa, McGwire and the rest of the lot are cowards and cheaters and want a guy with James’ stature to be on my side of the argument. I say this because James didn’t provide any provocative *cough* rational *cough* arguments to support his position, but takes the easy way out and says PED users will get in simply “because.”

Before reading this paper, if I had heard that Bill James had made the case for why steroid users should be baseball’s Hall of Fame my first thought would have been, “Great, I can’t wait to see how he makes his case.” Rather than provide a thought provoking lesson, James serves up a muddled, bordering on incoherent, collection of “arguments” that adds nothing to the debate.

Related Posts:

1. Bill James Gets it Wrong on the Issue of Cooperstown and the ‘Roids, Part 1
2. Performance Enhancing Drug Users are Guilty of Athletic Plagiarism
3. Report: Alex Rodriguez Used Steroids
4. Barry Bonds Indicted for Perjury
5. Mark McGwire is Lying to Himself About His Steroid Use