A-Fraud’s 3000th and Zero Chance for the Hall

Alex Rodriguez hit his 13th home run, his career 667th home run and also wound up getting his career 3000th base hit.  Regardless of what you think, these are some mind numbing stats I mean he’s the 29th player ever to reach that milestone in over 100 years of the league and the only players to have more home runs than him are Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth.  Absolutely amazing and everyone would agree he would be a lock for induction into the league’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

But Alex did like so many others have done before, he was on performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).  Like others before him and few has tried since, he chose to pursue a legacy of greatness and instead will walk away with something else entirely.  He still got his inflated statistics, but will get left out of the hall.

This guy who has a painted portrait of himself as a centaur above his bed and who kissed himself in a pose with a mirror to prove how much he loves himself in an article in Details magazine.  But he also gave the University of Miami $3.9 Million for a new baseball complex even though all he did was commit to the school before he bolted for his first MLB contract; but as long as they put his name as part of the name of the complex.

But all of this does not mean to paint him in a negative light, many other guys who have played the game have done worse and have been even worse people.  This sport which counts its history back into the mid to late 19th century has had its fill of racists, thieves, murderers, rapists, addicts of all types and players who fixed games.  Some of these are allegedly in the hall of fame, but other than fixing games which has a lifetime ban none of these other incidents would technically keep them out of the hall.  The only things that the self appointed custodians of the hall, the Baseball Writers of America (BBWA).

Now in the case of fixing or gambling on baseball the league’s commissioner has the authority to ban the offending persons from the game for life.  But say what you want of the BBWA they are the one’s who vote for the players to go into the hall, and it is up to them to keep those out of the hall who have violated the integrity of the game.   Now the BBWA members have voted no on some of their individual ballots for players who obviously belong in the hall for some stupid reasons, but for those who have used drugs to supplement their performance they are doing the right thing.

What we should care about is the integrity of the game, that’s what commissioner of MLB Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis saw that when he banned the offending players of the Chicago White Sox in the “Black Sox” Scandal.  While this person did many questionable acts as commissioner, like kept blacks out of MLB, he got his first official act as commissioner correct.  The unquestioned integrity of sports must be maintained, from gambling to cheating with PEDs those have no room for this wonderful sport.

So soon we will have the remainder of the steroid era players retire, they won’t be the last ones to cheat, but they will be the last ones to have played in an era where PEDs were common place and not even against the MLB bylaws.  But for Alex as he gets older and gets passed over for the hall for guys who played clean in their careers he can enjoy living with his wealth and he will always have his centaur pics of himself to look at and the only way he will be able to get into the hall is if he buys a ticket.