This morning I wrote about Jim Reeves’ column in which he said he believed that voting for the Hall of Fame was his “sacred duty” and that it was his aim to keep Cooperstown “clean and pure.”
My take was more one of amusement, but this afternoon The Common Man has a much more focused takedown. After detailing just how non-sacred the vote really is and how unclean and impure the current many members of the Hall of Fame actually are, TCM nails Reeves to the wall, wondering how it was possible that, in 40 years of covering the Rangers -- the Rangers! -- he never wrote about PEDs in baseball until Barry Bonds was poised to break Hank Aaron’s record.* And how, in that very article, he took a shot at Jose Canseco for “violating the code of the clubhouse” in talking about it in his books.
By all means, check out TCM’s take.
*UPDATE: From TCM: “In fairness to Reeves, after some additional research I found articles in which Reeves does write about steroid use in baseball that predates the 2004 Bonds chase of the Homerun record. Reeves did write about steroids on May 31, 2002, when he wrote that steroid users “should all be wearing a scarlet ‘S,’” and that Rusty Greer never saw steroids in the Ranger clubhouse. He also defended Gabe Kapler against steroid accusations in August of 2000. And on August 25, 1998, he said that the story about Mark McGwire’s andro use “is overblown” and that “You wouldn’t begrudge Nolan Ryan his Advil, would you? Troy Aikman his Met-RX? Popeye his spinach?” He continued to write about steroids on occasion between 2002 and 2004, all excoriating steroid users, never questioning his profession’s role in missing them for so long.”