Good morning, baseball fans!
Yesterday, it was announced that the San Francisco Giants will have yet another former player inducted into the Hall of Fame this season. This time, it will be Carlos Beltrán getting the honors.
Congratulations to Beltrán first and foremost. But my goodness, the hypocrisy is strong with this one.
This is the same Hall of Fame that continues to keep Barry Bonds out at all costs, ostensibly because of his ties to the steroid era. Meanwhile, we’ve seen players like David Ortiz
get voted in, despite testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.
And now Beltrán has been voted in as well, despite having a central role in the trash-can banging, sign-stealing legacy of the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series Championship.
While many would argue that Beltrán’s on-field performance outweighs the controversy, where is that same case for Bonds?
Why is it that voters can ignore the steroid usage by Ortiz and the cheating by Beltrán because of their playing legacy, but Bonds (one of the all time greatest to ever play the game) doesn’t deserve that same consideration?
Ultimately, it’s not even necessarily about Bonds (or Ortiz, or Beltrán). It’s about the hypocrisy and the inconsistency of the enforcement of their arbitrary, unwritten rules.
Either players embroiled in scandals like these aren’t eligible, and that is enforced consistently, or you don’t get to use these things as an exclusionary tactic.
But they can’t have it both ways and still expect to be respected as an institution.
