Bill Madden: A Sanctimonious Phony

     I am so tired of the idea that great players of the Steroid Era don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame because baseball needs a 'level playing field' to compare different eras. You know, Ruth, Mantle, and Maris never juiced or had to compete with players who did so it's not fair to put people like Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, or Barry Bonds on the same level. 

    The flaw in this argument is that baseball has never had a level playing field. You know who else the old time greats didn't have to compete against? Black and Latino players. So don't you think that if players of the Steroid Era deserve an asterisk, players from the Segregation Era deserve an even bigger one? 

   Of course, the bluestocking baseball writers don't see it that way. No surprise there that this self righteous cabal of old White men feels that way. Who is a bigger phony than Bill Madden? Madden acts as if he has the ability to magically know who did steroids and who didn't-he claims he never voted anyone that did steroids into the HOF, but how can he know that? He apparently thinks he has unique powers of divination. 

   In reality, there has always been a huge double standard on the steroid issue-some players are burned in effigy like A-rod, while other guys are left alone. 

     "Just 35% of us voted for Barry Bonds last year, far short of the required 75% necessary for induction. Yet, many more had no trouble supporting Mike Piazza (62% last year) or Jeff Bagwell (54%). Both admitted using the now-banned androstenedione, and their bodies and power also swelled to enormous proportions."

     "We don't vote for Roger Clemens, but accept at face value the accomplishments of other power pitchers in that era."

     "Oh, and even though Clemens spent millions in court to prove to prove he didn't commit perjury when he says he didn't use steroids, it's OK to blatantly disregard the federal criminal justice system."

     "I can't wait until two years from now and watch writers snub Bonds and Clemens, but turn around and vote for catcher Pudge Rodriguez in his first appearance on the ballot. Yep, just pretend the 30 pounds he lost over the winter of 2004 was a magical weight-loss program, and not a coincidence it occurred at the exact time steroid testing with penalties was implemented."

     "It's become a farce."

     "There are 34 players on this year's BBWAA ballot. Just a handful were firmly linked toPED use via the the anonymous 2003 test, the Mitchell Report, federal court testimony or their own admitted use.

     "Yet 30 of the 34 played the prime of their careers in the heart of the steroid era. Even if the estimates of players using PEDs made by former MVP Jose Canseco (85%) and Cy Young winner Eric Gagne (80% of his Dodgers teammates) are well on the high side, we'd be fooling ourselves to think these Hall candidates are that much cleaner than the norm."

     "We act as if Bonds and Clemens tried to ruin our game and everyone else on the ballot was clean."

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/is-it-time-for-war-on-war-on-steroids.html

     Madden, again, is one of the biggest phonies and yet he campaigns for Pete Rose-the one guy who really has disgraced the integrity of the game. Ok, maybe it's been a long time but the one thing we can't have is a belief that any game is ever fixed. 

     Look, you want to advocate for Rose, ok, it's your right. What gets me though is that Madden does it by knocking guys on steroids as if Rose looks good in comparison. 

      Now it is Selig’s successor, Rob Manfred, who Monday told reporters in Arizona that he, too, has received a letter from Rose’s attorneys seeking a meeting to discuss reinstatement, but unlike Selig, who tossed dozens of similar letters in his desk drawer, Manfred says he is going to have that hearing. “I want to hear what Pete has to say and I’ll make my decision once I’ve done that,” Manfred said.

     "I don’t know if Manfred can ever grant Rose full reinstatement to baseball, but I suspect, after presiding over the steroids era as Selig’s deputy, and seeing what Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and the like did to baseball’s hallowed records — and yet are still or will be eligible for the Hall of Fame — the new commissioner may feel Rose at least deserves that much."

    http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/madden-pete-rose-deserve-chance-ballot-hall-yeah-article-1.2151626

    If you ever want to make the case against baseball writers like Madden having so much power in who gets into the HOF this should be Exhibit 1. What a perverse value scale Madden has. He thinks that players that used steroids compromised the game worse than Pete Rose? 

   Let's be clear. One of the worst things anyone in sports ever has been accused of was the New Orleans Saints and Bountygate. 

   What Rose did was worse than that in at least one sense: the integrity of the game. As for 'baseball's hallowed records' Madden just shows how clueless he is. You mean those hallowed records during Segregation?

   " Rose has served 25 years now in baseball’s penalty box, and in all of his public appearances among the masses, mostly at autograph sessions, he is still talking up the game. He has also issued mea culpas for what he did, thousands of them, everywhere he speaks – which is something we’ll never get from Bonds."

   He should apologize more-what he did was much worse than Bonds. I question whether Bonds did anything wrong at all or if we should even have an across the board banning of steroids. 

   The sooner that phonies like Madden have some check placed on them with HOF voting the better-the writers like him just have way too much power. I'd like to see how former players and fans would vote. Why would their vote be worth less than a Bill Madden?

    UPDATE: I should include this quote by Madden that is just mind boggling:

    "I’m not saying Rose has paid his penalty and should be in the Hall of Fame. But by removing him from the permanent ineligible list and allowing him to work in baseball in, if nothing else, a ceremonial role, Manfred at least would put him on equal footing with all the steroids cheats, whose crimes against the game’s integrity were equally or even more egregious."

     There is nothing more egregious than what Rose did from the standpoint of the integrity of the game. Steroids is not even close. 

    UPDATE 2.0 Here is a piece that brings a reality check to some phonies like Madden that say even the Black Sox scandal wasn't as bad as steroids. 

    http://blog.nj.com/yankees/2009/02/the_greater_sin_steroids_or_th.html