Sosa, Steroids and Speculation

How about a few quick thoughts for the final weekend before Christmas…

— If you want to vote for who won the PosCast Holiday Draft… well, you can do so now over at the PosCast Newsletter!

— Sammy Sosa sort of, kind of made some news on Thursday when he sort of, kind of admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs. From his letter:

Sosa did this so that he would be welcomed back into the Cubs family, which he was—the Cubs announced that they’re inviting him to the 2025 Cubs Convention. I’m glad for the invitation; Sosa was an incredible player, one of the greatest and most beloved in Cubs history, and this reunion feels long overdue.

I was thinking about something Sosa-related the other day. Here are the top Hall of Fame vote seasons for the players I believe have been kept out mostly because of PED suspicions and allegations:

• Barry Bonds, 2022, 66%

• Roger Clemens, 2022, 65.2%

• Gary Sheffield, 2024, 63.9%

• Alex Rodriguez, 2023, 35.7%

• Manny Ramirez, 2023, 33.2%

• Mark McGwire, 2010, 23.7%

• Sammy Sosa, 2022, 18.5%

• Rafael Palmeiro, 2012, 12.6%

When you look at that list, in that order, I think you see a near-perfect hierarchy based on the consensus answer to the hypothetical question: “Would this player have been a Hall of Famer WITHOUT performance-enhancing drugs?”*

*The one slight exception is Sheffield: I think he got such a high vote total in his last year on the ballot because people believe his PED use was light and perhaps even involuntary. Then again, even this is sort of an answer to the “Would this player have been a Hall of Famer without PEDs?” question.

My point is: Everything surrounding the legacy of those players in the Selig Era is built around speculation and nonsense. How could we possibly know what these players’ careers would have been like without PEDs? I mean, would Rafael Palmeiro have not been a 3,000-hit, 500-homer guy? Can we really say that we know that? Heck, Palmeiro insists to this day he didn’t use steroids—he says his positive test in 2005 was the result of a tainted B-12 sample—and people will boldly speculate that he’s lying, but they don’t know. None of us know.

We can’t know, but then that’s at the heart of all of this: We know nothing. We don’t know who used, who didn’t, how much, how little or what impact it actually had on their careers. It’s all speculation. It’s simply a fact that there are lots and lots of players in the Hall of Fame who used drugs. We put them into categories. Alcohol is fine—not performance-enhancing. Amphetamines are fine—might be performance-enhancing, but not to the level that bothers us (apparently). Some steroid whispers and allegations are fine—we can shrug our shoulders and say “We don’t really know,” when the player is likable enough.

When Dave Parker was elected to the Hall of Fame, I was happy—happy for him, happy for his fans, happy to see a childhood hero enshrined. But the logic is so twisted it’s hard to trundle through the maze. Dave Parker was a known cocaine abuser; it just about detailed his career. So using drugs that diminish your career is OK for the Hall of Fame, but not drugs that enhance it? How does that work?

I’m thrilled to see Sammy Sosa back in the fold with the Cubs. And if making him obliquely apologize for using PEDs is what allowed that to happen, well, hey, whatever it takes. But it all feels really silly. Sammy Sosa brought more thrills to Chicago Cubs fans than anybody since Ernie Banks. I don’t quite know why he has to apologize for that.

Happy Holidays! Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support.

— I’m actually quite fired up for Saturday’s college football extravaganza. I’ve written before how I’ve lost a lot of college football interest, but Saturday should feel a little bit like what those wonderful end-of-year bowl days felt like—wall-to-wall college football! I’m ready.

Here’s the full schedule:

• SMU at Penn State, noon, TNT/Max

• Clemson at Texas, 4 p.m., TNT/Max

• Tennessee at Ohio State, 8 p.m., ABC/ESPN

— This just arrived from , who took a photo of this sticker on somebody’s back windshield.

— OK, we’re at those final days before Christmas, so there’s still time for you late gift shoppers to buy a fun football book or a fun baseball book or a delightful newsletter subscription for somebody in your life, or even somebody you’ve never met!

And I should mention, though it’s early, that the paperback of WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL will be coming out on March 11—I wrote a special bonus essay for that one.