The full Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2024 was announced this week, and three players were voted in by the Baseball Writers Association of America: Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer. But as has been the case for over a decade now, the announcement was just as notable for who was not elected: Gary Sheffield got only 63.9% of the vote on his tenth and final year on the ballot, falling just 23 votes shy of election. Now he joins the ranks of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens — that is, players who clearly deserve to be elected to the Hall of Fame, but have been kept out because of their connections to steroids.
I don’t want to re-litigate the whole steroids/HoF thing (today), but what I am interested in is how the steroids issue has opened a whole Pandora’s box regarding the Hall of Fame’s “character clause.” Technically, this clause — which instructs voters to base their decision “upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played” — has been part of the Hall of Fame selection process forever. But before the Steroid Era, it was not really taken seriously. I am not aware of any instance prior to ~2005 in which a worthy player was kept out of the Hall of Fame because voters felt his character was lacking.* Perhaps there are examples, but the clause was not enough to keep out virulent racists, abusive husbands, or known cheaters.
*Two commonly cited examples — Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose — were not really analogous because they weren’t even included on the Hall of Fame ballot. Both Jackson and Rose received lifetime bans from baseball for gambling, and the Hall of Fame rules do not allow a player banned from the sport to be inducted. In other words, it wasn’t the BBWAA voters who kept Jackson and Rose out — they were not even given the option of voting for them.
But ever since the clause started getting invoked by people who wanted to keep steroid users out of the Hall of Fame, it has grown in power. Now it’s not just steroid guys who are kept out for character reasons: Carlos Beltrán, Curt Schilling, and Omar Vizquel** have all had their candidacies derailed for various moral sins unrelated to steroids.
**The Vizquel thing is a little weird because he was always an eminently mediocre player whose Hall of Fame case baffled me. But prior to serious allegations of domestic abuse and sexual harassment coming out a few years ago, he was on track to getting elected, garnering over 52% of votes in just his third year on the ballot. This year, though, he’s down to 17.7% — that’s higher than I would have guessed he’d ever get when he retired, but still a fall primarily attributed to moral issues.
And the whole thing has rendered baseball’s Hall of Fame completely ridiculous. It was one thing when the Hall of Fame had a handful of exceptions — some obviously great players, like Rose and Bonds and Clemens, who were kept out for clear moral sins. But now we have a fuzzy standard applied to a moving target, where we have to weigh postseason RBIs against domestic abuse allegations. MVP awards versus allegations that surfaced in lawsuits from 18 years ago.
The result is, unsurprisingly, a complete mess that makes no sense to anyone. Joe Mauer gets elected on the first ballot, but not Carlos Beltrán? Todd Helton gets in, but not Gary Sheffield? David Ortiz but no Alex Rodriguez? What the hell are we doing here? What exactly are we honoring? What are we penalizing?
This is what happens when you rely on workplaces to mete out justice. Obviously the baseball Hall of Fame is a weird thing that is not really analogous to most jobs. But punishing people at work for things that have nothing to do with work is actually a pretty common feature of capitalism. Recently it’s taken on a kind of extreme, high-profile flavor, with things like actors getting fired from movies for social media posts, or Bill Ackman demanding Harvard tell him about all the pro-Palestine students on campus so he could blacklist them.
But most of the time it’s more mundane, like drug-testing employees, running background checks on job applicants, or firing people who embarrass an employer. Most of the time it’s not even controversial, and it’s certainly not limited to either side of the political spectrum.
Really, this stuff is an extension of “this job is an honor” type talk that treats people’s skill at their job as somehow intimately connected to their moral character.
People only really have a problem with it when it seems too harsh because the victim is sympathetic, or because someone has lost their job unfairly.
In the case of the Hall of Fame, that doesn’t really apply. It’s hard to feel too bad for anyone because they are only a borderline Hall of Famer — all these people had enviable careers (and made lots of money). Plus, many of them, like Schilling and Vizquel, seem like legitimately bad people to whom good things should not happen.
Still, the Hall of Fame shows the deeper problems here. Because even without a sympathetic victim, we can see how stupid this system is. First, as mentioned, it leads to a vague standard that is impossible to apply consistently. And so inevitably that “standard” gets used against whoever we don’t like. Someone like Gary Sheffield — who was not well-liked by the media — gets no benefit of the doubt, while someone more cuddly like David Ortiz does.
And Sheffield isn’t alone. Many of the players kept out of the Hall of Fame for alleged steroid use — Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod — had frosty relationships with the media and checkered personal lives. In fact, you will often hear people bring up non-steroid issues with these candidates: Bonds faced allegations of domestic abuse, and Clemens allegedly had an affair with a minor. This always strikes me as a great illustration of how things like the character clause work in practice. Because nobody would really care about these things if not for the steroid allegations, but since those allegations do exist, people are inclined to dwell on other unsavory details.
This is how vague standards like the character clause are bound to work. After all, if you look at anyone closely, you can find issues with their “character” — so we don’t look as closely at people we basically like. But this isn’t fair; it’s just easy.
Really, I think that’s why people like using the labor market to discipline people they don’t like — it’s easier. You don’t have to worry about meeting any standard of evidence or adopting any consistent rules that might be applied to someone you like…. You can just tattle to the boss (or, in this case, the BBWAA) and let them mete out the punishments. Then, when people say that’s unfair, you can just retreat to “well, having this job/being in the Hall of Fame is an honor! Why shouldn’t we have a high standard??” and suddenly you’re the asshole for not having a high enough standard.
But it’s not about a high or low standard — it’s about having any standard at all beyond the vibes of the people in charge. You can’t build a just system based on the whims of the boss…
Yeah, but what about much more clear examples of deeply morally problematic behavior? Convictions of child abuse or rape? Or Rose’s or Jackson’s behavior if they HAD been in the ballot? You seem to be implying but not stating or explaining why even if there were a clearer standard, these sorts of things can’t be weighed against home runs or RBIs (and, pshht, isn’t putting someone in the Hall based on RBI totals nearly as problematic?)