Hall of Fame Questions

As the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame approaches there are several questions to who should be voted in and the justifications for certain players as they are now eligible to be inducted. Players such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire are eligible to be inducted into to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but they definitely do not deserve to be voted in. All of these players were some of the best players to ever play in the game, but much of their success were due to the cheating involved in their success. These players were the start of the steroid era where a huge number of the players in the league at the time were using this drug to drastically increase their overall strength and give them an unfair advantage over the other players. These players were already having success in their careers, but in order to have an edge over the competition they decided to use steroids to have unbelievable statistics to help them in being recognized around the world and to receive long term contracts to be successful for life. Barry Bonds seems to have the best argument for being inducted into the Hall of Fame, not because he is the all-time home run leader, but because the success he had in his career before he started taking steroids. Early in his career when he played for the Pittsburgh Pirates he was known for his ability to have incredible speed and power and his abilities were vivid through his statistics. The part of his ability to making it in the Hall of Fame is the fact that it is unclear to when he starting taking the steroids and when they made an impact on his game. Even if all these players had great careers before being involved with steroids, it is not enough to overpower the unethical moves they made to cheat their way against the competition and they should never have a chance to make it to this honorary place. The questions for these players that took steroids is similar to Pete Rose's situation as he was one of the best players of all time, but was not voted into the Hall of Fame yet because of his involvement with gambling and betting on the games he was involved in. I strongly believe that Rose should be voted into the Hall of Fame because he never did anything to have an unfair advantage over the rest of the players in the league and never cheated the game as a whole just like these players mentioned above. Rose, the all-time hits leader deserves to receive this honor because he played the game the right way and clearly has the stats to prove he belongs to be with the rest of baseball's greats.