As will increasingly be a question: the great baseball players whose careers coincided with the peak of the steroid era are being considered for admission into the Hall of Fame. Are they worthy? Like any debate on ethics, the answers are clear to child’s logic at the extremes (I’m looking at you Jose Canseco, the Typhoid Mary of the steroid scandals). Into the grey-shades must come considerations of what is now ubiquitous medical technology for all modern people, irrespective of “unnatural” performance enhancement, whatever that means. Only technical medical studies can ever truly know these things as hard and clear facts. Even then, all clinicians are shocked at how often our tested logic is overturned. Cooperstown is not, and should not become, an evaluator of medical studies.

For starters, “The Hall” is not a court of justice. It’s a marketing device for a business (nothing wrong with that, some products really are the best). Baseball’s sanctity is entirely self-appointed. That its Halls are entertained as hallowed is only a matter of public perception (again, nothing wrong with that. When a religion or state asserts its sanctity, similar skepticism is adult). Part of the Hall’s marketing power is in its ability to conjure, in order to “solve,” debates like the one your author is addressing now.

Baseball has an image to project, and just as there is no high court to tell Marlboro that they may associate their cigarette with the myth of a free man of the West and not a ventilator-slave scarecrow, so baseball is allowed to portray themselves as part of a long line of honest sportsmen, and point to a panorama of achievement in continuity, without needing anyone’s permission. The policies are theirs to make.

But, to this perceiver of the product image: baseball’s record books have rarely been on the level. It formally excluded all African-American athletes for most of its history. To be fair, the right time to begin to properly count the records that include the achievements of all baseball players is some number of years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 (whenever I think of the sturm und drang of Roger Maris’ asterisk, I think of a PT Barnum “wink”). Time should be allowed for professional-level coaching to develop these players. Let’s say the proper fair and square record starts some 5 years after Mr. Robinson. It’s generally agreed that the steroid era began in the early ’80s. That leaves us with about a generation of racially fair play before the beginning of the steroid era. A very narrow window of time for “pure” baseball. Factor in the change in the pitching mound height, meant to temper pitching dominance, and you find nothing close to a pristine competitive continuity.

Ethics should evolve from learning.

Which is why baseball’s narrative on race has changed, and that is a great thing. We have become a more inclusive society, more empathetic, and that’s all for everyone’s benefit. Even the Catholic Church has evolved its teaching in its Second Vatican Council on the entry into paradise of good-faith practitioners of other religious schools. There are no voices questioning the ethics of improved world-wide scouting and computer aided motion analysis, both of which have been a big part of why the record books of all sports have been laid waste over the last two decades. When I watch hockey films from twenty years ago, some of the skating looks practically spastic. Improved technique has been a goal of sports since the Greek Olympic ideal. But I think steroids would be taboo to them; they’d place them in the category of black magic. Baseball’s image needs to fight a perception that success goes to an arms race of the best chemically manipulated.

Just as all crimes are not equal, neither is all cheating. The difference between “a stratagem” and “cheating” is not a bright hard line, but a continuum, in sports as in war. Generally, “cheating” is what is done to you and “a stratagem” is what you do to them. The flaccid Super Bowl game ball thrown by Tom Brady harms nobody but other millionaire implementers of “stratagems” and “cheats.” But if steroids are allowed, the harm, in the need to keep up, would be passed down to honest athletes at every level of the game, maybe down to the High School level. It seems Barry Bonds got on the steroid gerbil wheel chasing the home run derby hype, during which I saw Sammy Sosa’s punky bat fold up like the main course at a termite cork buffet. I no more believe his bat boy handed him the wrong one than I believe Jimi Hendrix would not notice if he were handed the wrong guitar. But the home run derby was great fun, and baseball is entertainment, thus it need not be holy.

Which brings us to Gaylord Perry. As a kid, I was highly entertained to be let in on the Gaylord Perry greaseball secret by my dad. Everyone watching his dabbing, obsessive-compulsive windup for the “fix.” Gaylord Perry is a main character in baseball’s operatic pantheon of characters. I have no idea how good a player Dizzy Dean was, but I do know he also has a great baseball name and fits into the baseball opera like an aria. It’s all great fun. Style counts.

Scamp, rascal, hard-ass, asshole. We have different words for different concepts, because there are many variations and levels in wrongness; crimes and misdemeanors. Baseball is allowed to turn on its villains for the simple reason that most people would visit Gaylord Perry stuff in the Hall of Fame (every entry should be covered in mysterious grease), and not A-Rod’s (if he gains entry). This is largely because A-Rod is a nasty piece of work irrespective of his black magic, steroid cheating.

Baseball should be faulted for not addressing the steroid issue before they did. And failure to ethically adapt means the change will be forced upon the institution to the expense of their sanctimonious credibility. Just ask the Catholic Church about their failure to deal with their pervert priests in a Christian way (Christian regard for the victims). This is a reason to celebrate the adaptation of any culture. An institution should never have complete power over their image.

Ethics should evolve from learning. It’s good that the image of football is stained by the NFL’s cynicism in addressing the repetitive concussion issue. Knee injuries to millionaires is not an issue; I had my own ACL torn to Hell. Messing around with the function of someone’s brain is something altogether different; Hall of Fame, institution, and rule book must yield to this new known fact. This is really saying that wisdom follows from empathy, which is the same as “it’s tough to judge a man after hearing his story.” It is just that the questions of cheating hang over modern baseball’s highest achievers: Mark McGwire can never have a drink across the length and breadth of our baseball-loving land without the room wondering what “andro” was. His questionable renown has long outlasted his two seasons of glory. But I think Mark McGwire did a service when he frankly fessed up, saying that the steroids he used did not help him homer, but kept his battered athletes’ body in the game longer. Medical technology is an intimate fact of life in the world as it is today, it hardly was in Dizzy Dean’s day. So, if we “civilians” can take steroids to treat disability, how is it wrong for Mark McGwire? It seems likely that steroids are not evil black magic after all, so maybe the pendulum should swing back. Surgery is acceptable but not medication? What about nutrition? It’s not so easy to know what is fair and right, just as it should be. And institutions will rarely proactively change rules; they do it when they are made to.

These debates are never “solved.” They survive or die over time based on their usefulness and adaptation. The baseball Hall of Fame can do what it thinks prudent regarding the rules. We can do what we like in accepting its credibility.

Sports gets what should be bemused outrage and debates over a pint or table. We should confine our true outrage to issues truly outrageous, like how many mentally ill people we incarcerate. By the way, in the “great fun was had by all” vein: Gaylord Perry was finally caught, after years and years, slathering the ball in Vaseline, the scamp.

• About the Author

About Eugene Darden Nicholas

Eugene Darden (Ed) Nicholas is from Flushing Queens, where he grew up sheltered from the hard world, learning the true things after graduating college and becoming a paramedic in Harlem. School continues to inform and entertain in all its true, Shakespearean glory. It's a lot of fun, really. In that career, dozens of people walk the earth now who would not be otherwise. (The number depends on how literally or figuratively you choose to add). He added a beloved wife to his little family, which is healthy. He is also well blessed in friends and colleagues.