The Hall Of Fame.
But before we get to that, let's talk about performance enhancing drugs… because they've had a big week.
Lance Armstrong is going to confess to doping at the feet of Oprah later this week. Major League Baseball will institute a comprehensive plan for random HGH testing starting in 2013. The Hall of Fame elected 0 members to the 2013 class, leaving out some of the statistically best players in history.
Three big stories in and of themselves, coming together at the same time.
Lance Armstrong has probably done more for the fight against cancer than any other single individual the past 20 years (at least financially). But he's pretty much the most obnoxious liar in sports.
Baseball, once again, is leading the way in professional sports with aggressive measures to try and catch cheaters and we want to commend them. But they're still the guys that looked the other way during the 90's and 00's when more players were on PEDs than not. Probably.
Oh, and the Hall of Fame for MLB? They decided to invoke a moral clause in the voting procedure to keep the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others out of it's annals, even though these guys haven't been convicted of anything. Not even breaking the rules, since most PEDs weren't clearly outlined as against MLB rules.
Sigh.
It's a tedious conversation.
Here we are, though. Constantly being sucked back into the conversation. And you know what's bothersome?
The lack of common sense.
It's like we've let the 'draw a line in the sand' attitude that plagues politics creep into the sports world.
I've not once heard this:
Things change. Time moves on. What used to be tolerated is changing, just like in the real world. Sucks that Lance and Big Mac and hundreds of other guys took PEDs to gain an advantage… but it happened. All we can do now is try to make sure the loopholes we know exist are being closed and push forward.
Cheaters are going to cheat. Some of them are going to get caught. But retroactively trying to worked up about PEDs is pretty much a huge waste of time.
And that's why you're not going to get much handwringing from this site over the non-elected Hall of Fame class of 2013. A museum isn't going to get it's new exhibits. Bigger injustices are out there.
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