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 Pitcher Roger Clemens and sluggers Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire
should be included in the shrine as stars of their generation,
attached with an asterisk to note the questions that surround their
achievements, former manager La Russa told ESPN.
Those players deserve recognition as the best of their time despite
being linked to performance enhancers, said La Russa, who will join
five other new inductees at Cooperstown this weekend.
“If you were a Hall of Famer during that period as far as your
pitching and playing, I would create some kind of asterisk, where
everybody understands that, ‘Look, we have some questions, but you
were still the dominant pitchers and players of your time,'” said La
Russa.
“I might get voted out of the Hall of Fame with that attitude, but
that’s what I believe.”
La Russa's view flies in the face of outspoken Hall of Fame members
and in the voting record of members of the Baseball Writers
Association of America, who have yet to elect a player linked to
performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) into the Hall.
 "He is naturally entitled to his opinion, but he is not part of the
voting body for the Hall of Fame," BBWAA Secretary/Treasurer Jack
O'Connell told Reuters on Friday in an e-mail.
"The rules are clear; voters may vote for anyone on the ballot up to
a number of 10," added O'Connell about the system, which requires 75
percent of the votes cast to earn induction.
Vote totals for Clemens, Bonds and McGwire were not close to winning
entrance. Clemens was ninth (35.4 percent) among vote getters, Bonds
was one place back (34.7) and McGwire was 18th on the list with a
distant 11 percent.
Many already enshrined Hall of Famers have insisted that drug
cheaters were not fit for Cooperstown.
In recent years, iconic slugger Hank Aaron has said, "The game has
no place for cheaters." Pitcher Goose Gossage, elected in 2008,
said, "Cheaters should absolutely not be in the Hall of Fame."
The late Bob Feller, elected to Cooperstown in 1962, presciently
told Reuters in 2006: "Those players who have been convicted of
using steroids or are caught using them are not going to get the
numbers (from the BBWAA) to be elected to the Hall of Fame...and I
am with them on that."
DARK PERIOD
La Russa, who brought his former player McGwire back into baseball
by hiring him as the St. Louis Cardinals batting coach in 2009, said
an explanation of how the "dark period" of PEDs evolved in the 1990s
is important.
"That story is not as easy to explain as people would think," La
Russa said in an interview aired on National Public Radio (NPR) on
Friday.
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"We really started weight training and supplements like creatine
which was still legal and all of a sudden it got away from us.
"Baseball is still not sure how to explain that 10 or 12 year
period..."
La Russa, who won 2,728 games in his 33-year career as a Major
League Baseball manager to stand third on the all-time list, said
the PED craze grew out of a natural, competitive inclination.
"In all competitive sports people are always looking for the edge,
always trying to push, push, push," he told NPR.
"In this case as guys got stronger, that natural bent to try and get
an edge drifted over to illegal performance enhancers. That’s why
you have to monitor and watch."
He added, "Just breaking a rule, you should be punished. If it
breaks a law, that‘s much more serious."
Major League Baseball in cooperation with the Players Association
installed mandatory drug testing in 2003 and a 20-month
investigation produced the 311-page Mitchell Report in December 2007
that chronicalled pervasive doping in the sport, leading to a
stricter doping agreement and punishments.
While the widespread use of performance enhancers found by the
Mitchell Report seems to have abated, incidents of doping have not
vanished.
Last August, 13 players, including baseball's highest paid player
Alex Rodriguez, were handed suspensions over their involvement with
an anti-aging clinic accused of supplying PEDs to MLB players.
(Reporting by Larry Fine in New York; Editing by Gene Cherry)
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