To Hall or not to Hall, that is the question...

Living in this world can either be a challenge (hint: laden with problems, people with attitudes) or an opportunity. With Alex Rodriguez coming close to a major milestone in Major League Baseball – 600 career home runs – the debate over what is considered the “new” credentials to be elected into the baseball Hall of Fame is hot and heavy. It used to be that everyone just knew what it would take to make it into the hallowed Hall. Outstanding performance, grit, enduring statistics, leadership and success on the field all weighed into the measured ballots of the vaunted sportswriters of America. Now, with the taint of steroids on the past 25 years of baseball, the debate rages causing many to attempt to redefine what it means to be an outstanding baseball player in the modern, drug-stained era and how to attempt to compare to the other, cleaner, brighter, “good ol’ days” of baseball.

Unfortunately, even good baseball players that may have succumbed to the pressure of performance for ungodly amounts of money for a short period of time are now suspect. Will Andy Pettitte now be excluded for a relatively small indiscretion? Or will it have to be a gross abuse that physically showed like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa or a player from my beloved San Francisco Giants, Barry Bonds? Or should we just build a separate wing on the Hall – The Steroid Wing, or the late 20th Century Wing – with a giant asterisk above the door? How will the sportswriters compare the accomplishments of the modern athlete versus those feats of amazing game-changing abilities of the earlier players? Is it even possible to compare the game as it was when all that anyone worried about was gambling and booze?

So do we allow Pettitte to walk through the proverbial gates of St. Babe and keep Roger Clemens on the outs because Clemens has been unrepentant to date? Do we allow Bonds to enter because of his incredible accomplishments before his head got physically a few sizes bigger during one off-season? Do we permanently keep McGwire and Sosa out because they only provided a couple of seasons of excitement? And why is no one looking at Serena Williams and asking the same questions? Have you seen her next to her competitors? Has anyone questioned the amount of muscle as well as the anger management problem that is so obvious that looks like ‘roid rage?

So in the end, it’s really all about the money. If we as a fan base weren’t willing to pay basically a day’s pay for just one seat at one of these sporting events, there certainly wouldn’t be the pressure to perform at a level that is beyond the existing evolutionary chain. So, in the end, we push our kids to attempt to launch themselves into the stratosphere of sport, all so that we can watch them explode like fireworks on Fourth of July when it all comes crashing around them. Good thing they made all that money.