Jackson, Bonds and Clemens

Well over a year ago, I responded to a comment on a piece about the self-appointed guardian of the Wikipedia piece about "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, the long-ago White Sox outfielder who participated in a plot to throw the 1919 World Series.  The comment had pointed out a potential inconsistency between my point in an even earlier piece advocating for certain PED-accused retired players to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, while still opposing the induction of Joe Jackson.

I suggested that I would try to resolve the inconsistency in a subsequent piece, but only now, 14 months later, do I seem to be getting around to it.  [OK, I did something like that contrasting two of the PED users so accused with Pete Rose, who bet on the game.  But this is different as well.]

There is certainly a difference, at least in my view of morality as it applies to major-league baseball.  Let's review the cases.  Joe Jackson conspired to perform below his capabilities in order to lose baseball games -- in his case, games of the 1919 World Series -- and was paid to do so.  He ultimately testified before a grand jury of his complicity.

He was acquitted in the trial, along with the other seven conspirators, principally because the grand jury testimony was stolen from the Court before the trial took place.  I say "principally" because, given that the jury participated in a big celebration with the players after the acquittal, it is not perfectly clear that a conviction would have occurred regardless of the availability of the grand jury testimony.  The commissioner of baseball suspended all eight of them for life regardless, and Jackson remains suspended to this day and thus ineligible for the Hall of Fame despite the Hall-worthy quality of his career.

I specifically wrote of the circumstances of the accused PED users Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.  Their candidacy for the Hall, each of them, is unassailable.  I can quote statistics all day, but let it suffice to note that Bonds hit more home runs than any player in the history of major league baseball, and Clemens was named the top pitcher in baseball seven times.  On career alone, they would be in the Hall on their first try.

There is, of course, that pesky PED thing.  And unfortunately, for the purposes of this article, I have to stipulate that they used PEDs, even though there are no failed tests to point to, no suspensions for either of them, and even if they did use, the rules of the game were really soft for much of their careers, about what could and could not be used as supplements.

So yes, I have to stipulate for this article that both of them used.  But I will also concede to their fans and supporters that the arcs of their respective careers both appear to reflect Hall of Fame quality performances before they were each assumed to have started using PEDs, and certainly before the rules against their use were clarified and the banned substances better defined.  In other words, they could clearly have retired as Hall of Famers without ever having touched a nanogram of anything that would ever have been eventually banned.

How, then, do we logically contrast the Joe Jackson case with Bonds and Clemens?

I believe that the logical argument, at least the one that reflects my moral compass, is the sense of corruption.  There is one core expectation that baseball fans in the USA have, and that is that the players are doing their best to try to win (or at least not trying to lose).  Some make it hard for you to believe they're actually trying, yes, especially when they show up for Spring Training 40 pounds or so overweight, but that's another story.

Bonds and Clemens, and for that matter everyone who took PEDs or was even accused of taking PEDs, were doing so to perform better on the field.  At some point, of course, we learned enough to know that those taking PEDs were putting their health at serious risk, not that there is any virtue in that, but they were trying to perform better on the field.

Some call that "cheating."  I get that, although I'm not excessively wound up in that word.  Plenty of players have cheated in some manner in the 150 years or so of baseball, not that it is good that they did.  But they were, in their efforts, trying to win.  And to me, while that doesn't let the "cheaters" of any kind off the hook, it is not equally corrupt with those who tried to lose.  Especially when they were paid to try to lose, not by their employers but by people betting on the game.

I am on record not as defending the alleged actions of Bonds and Clemens, but believing that they had Hall-worthy careers prior to when some believe they started using PEDs, and should be inducted on their performance and let history judge them as individuals.

Joe Jackson is a whole different case.  He violated rules that were known to every player by accepting money to try to lose games intentionally.  Accordingly, he broke his compact with the team, his clean teammates, the owner and the fans, but most importantly, he broke explicit rules that he knew would get him thrown out of baseball.  And his actions were, again, meant to try to lose games in, of all things, the World Series.

Rational people may disagree about how to regard PED users, especially with neither evidence nor even confessions to ascribe to them.  I would want to hope that the case of Shoeless Joe Jackson's lifetime ban makes sense to all of us.

Except for the clown guarding his Wikipedia site.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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