Reminder: There are already steroids users in the Hall of Fame

Today, when the BBWAA elects either no one or, at best, two of over a dozen deserving candidates into the Hall of Fame, a lot of people will say they’re OK with that because it’s better to err on the side of caution than it is to allow a PED user to enter Cooperstown’s hallowed halls. When they say this, remind them of the following passage from page 28 of the Mitchell Report:

In 1973, a Congressional subcommittee announced that its staff had completed an “in depth study into the use of illegal and dangerous drugs in sports” including professional baseball. The subcommittee concluded that “the degree of improper drug use – primarily amphetamines and anabolic steroids – can only be described as alarming.”

Then remember -- via Larry Granillo of Wezen-Ball from back in 2010 -- that one Hall of Fame voter, Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post, has already said that he knows a current Hall of Famer used steroids. He said it on camera, in Ken Burns’ motherf---ing “Tenth Inning":

“There was another player now in the Hall of Fame who literally stood with me and mixed something and I said “What’s that?” and he said “it’s a Jose Canseco milkshake”. And that year that Hall of Famer hit more home runs than ever hit any other year. So it wasn’t just Canseco, and so one of the reasons that I thought that it was an important subject was that it was spreading. It was already spreading by 1988.”

Steroid use in baseball was “alarming” as of 1973. As of 1988 a guy who is now in the Hall of Fame was taking “Jose Canseco milkshakes,” which clearly meant steroids.

There is nothing left to protect. The “caution” that will be lauded today when so many worthy candidates fail to be elected will be empty and meaningless at best, active perpetuation of a double standard at worst.