Should Big Mac Make the Hall?

The year is 1982. It's a summer like any other at Mulcahy Stadium, except this year a skinny youngster named Mark McGuire is knocking the stuffing out of the ball, hitting .404 with 10 homers and 44 RBI's for the Glacier Pilots. Whether or not anyone predicted it, sixteen years later that same skinny kid would become a muscle-bound freak of nature, blasting his way well past Roger Maris' MLB single-season home run record, setting the new mark at a whopping 70 bombs.

It was the feel-good story of Baseball's decade of decline. Headlines hailed McGuire -- and fellow slugger Sammy Sosa, who kept pace with McGuire until the end -- as the savior of the game. A stretch of highway in Missouri was named after the Cardinals' slugger. And McDonald's reaped the benefits of having a superstar nicknamed "Big Mac" as the darling of the nation.



We all know what happened next. The "s-word". McGuire got caught up in the Congressional hearings on steroid use in baseball and feebly tried to avoid answering questions, essentially -- in the minds of 99.9% of those who paid attention -- admitting guilt. The honeymoon was over and baseball's summer of glory had been turned into another black eye.

Fast forward to the present day, 2009. This year's Hall of Fame ballot has been released and McGuire is taking his fourth shot at cracking the Hall. After being denied the past three years, and having his vote counts decline to the point where he is barely eligible to remain on the ballot, I'd say it's a foregone conclusion that Big Mac is not going to make it. But sometimes there is a disconnect between the fans who love the game and the voters who make it their profession to opinionize about it. With that in mind, I thought it would be worth it to take a look at both sides of the issue, and I'd love to have some readers weigh in on this controversy.

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As I see it, there could be three possible criteria for arguing for or against Mark McGuire's induction into the Hall of Fame. The three are:

1. Moral Character. Should a player's moral fiber factor into the decision, either for or against?
2. Raw Statistics. How do a player's numbers stack up against other HOF'ers.
3. Historical Significance. Did the player play an important role in baseball history, and how does this factor?

It's pretty obvious that in the morality category, Big Mac is a big loser. The guy cheated and that's not very nice of him. But the important question is, how much does moral fiber factor into these decisions? Dale Murphy (one of the best power hitters of the 1980's, who suffered a dramatic drop into mediocrity toward the end of his career, which has resulted in his failure to make the Hall despite being on the ballot year after year after year) has yet to be inducted, and that man was a saint. A Latter-Day Saint to be more precise. Anyway, if being a straight-laced church boy who helps elderly ladies across the street isn't enough to give a player an edge in the voting, should being a sleazebag really count against somebody? If you're not going to count the hits, you shouldn't count the misses. It wouldn't be very consistent to punish Big Mac for his transgressions by withholding HOF votes.

The question of statistics is a tricky one. If no one had ever known about all this steroid business, he would be a lock. He broke one of the biggest records in baseball, one which had stood for decades. But then there is this issue of whether or not that record (or Barry Bonds' record in 2001) is tainted by the obvious cheating. I could buy that. But wait, there is another twist. It's pretty well known that the HOF is for the best players of a certain era. We're not comparing McGuire to Maris because they are from different epochs of the game's history. And when a guy comes from a period of time commonly known as "The Steroid Era" it kinda makes you wonder if, when compared against his peers who were also on roids, he still stands out enough to make the Hall. I don't know. It's a toss-up.

The one category Big Mac wins outright is historical significance, precisely because of his role in the steroid scandal. Let's face it, he will always be remembered -- although perhaps overshadowed by Bonds -- as an example of the rise and fall of the chemically-enhanced player. The fact that I'm even posting this right now is testament to the fact that the name Mark McGuire will remain etched in the annals of baseball history whether the people who vote on these things care or not. But, like the moral character angle, is this enough to make him HOF-worthy?

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So what do I think? I'm as undecided now as I was when I started writing this. Of course, it doesn't really matter what I think. I don't get to cast a ballot on this issue. That being said, my analysis is as good as yours, so why not share your thoughts in the form of a comment? Perhaps we can come to some sort of consensus on this one.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencurtis/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 )