In January 2010, Rich Gossage made some pretty sharp statements in support of the idea that PED users should not be in the Hall of Fame. I interviewed Gossage right after that and asked him what he thinks should be done if it was found that an existing member of the Hall was later found to have used PEDs during his playing career. This is what he told me:
“I don’t really know what I’d do. We’d have to find out all the facts. It’s a big dark cloud. I don’t know what the scenario would look like.”
In the past 35 months he has figured it out. Here are his comments about that subject now:
“They cheated. They (expletive) cheated. I believe that, hey, there’s gotta be a paddle for these guys’ asses. This is the last step of punishment there for them. If a guy gets into the Hall of Fame and we find out later he was cheating, kick him out!”
Alrighty then. And dudes, you should all be lucky that Gossage didn’t catch you juicing when he played:
“I saw guys go from Barney Fife to Lou Ferrigno from one season to the next. It made me sick. It made me sick. It made me sick for Roger Maris, sick for all the guys who set the records that fell. Just sick.”
Not sick enough to say anything then, of course. But maybe it took him three years to get mad about that too.