A Case for Rafa...

So today Rafael Palmeiro, he of the most righteous indignation we've seen this side of the late Senator Robert Byrd, has now come out to once again proclaim his innocence. He never took steroids, period. Except, comma, that one time when he was caught, open parenthesis, but that was Miguel Tejada's fault, close parenthesis, period. The reason Palmeiro has somehow found his way back into the news is because, with the baseball Hall of Fame voting in full swing, he is one of the most unique candidates to date. He is one of only four players in baseball history to record 3000+ hits and 500+ home runs, and those other three guys (Aaron, Mays, and Murray) were all first-ballot Hall of Famers. And yet, Palmeiro has an exactly 0% chance of getting in, and if the out of touch writers who make up the voting committee have their way, he'll never get in.
Without getting into too long-winded an excoriation of Major League Baseball and why it is rapidly becoming irrelevant, let's take an objective look at baseball in the last fifteen years. Who will we remember from the era beginning in the mid-nineties until now? Who were the game's best players? Guys like Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, and Palmeiro not only fit the bill as a walking metaphor for this period of the game's history, but they were the preeminent players of their era. If there's one thing all the muckraking over steroids has taught us, it's that it's safe to assume that most

people were doing something they shouldn't have been. This fact, essentially, levels the playing field. 'Roided up fielders played behind the 'roided up pitchers who were facing the 'roided up hitters. We don't have to like it, we can say that it violates the "purity" of baseball, but even then one would be making assumptions about baseball that simply aren't true.
Let's not forget that until 1946, baseball was a non-integrated, "whites only" sport. Why don't we look at what Babe Ruth did as tainted? He didn't face some of the best players in the entire country, including the legendary Satchel Paige, whose prime lined up directly with Ruth's and who was an all-star in 1953 at the ripe old age of 47 after Major League Baseball integrated African-American players.
What this all boils down to is that with sports we always need something to complain about, and baseball fans and writers especially care a disproportionate amount about preserving the history of the game. What's interesting, then, is that some uglier people and moments of the game's history (Ty Cobb, most of the George Steinbrenner era, etc.) are celebrated, while things like steroids get swept under the rug. We are so quick to rush to judge these supposed "cheaters," without stopping to think that they were merely playing within the context of their era.

The time has come to step back and re-evaluate what the Hall of Fame really means. If it's a shrine to all that is good and pure about baseball, there are a few guys who might want to give their plaques back. What it has become, and what is always should be, is a time capsule that shows visitors who mattered in different time periods. Baseball has the popularity it does today because of the home run chase of 1998 between Sosa and McGwire; how can we, as fans of a game that loves history, sweep them from the record? These "steroid guys" were the most important players of their generation; it's time to let them in and secure their place in the history of the game. Let the fans decide, for once, how to judge them.