We were always told as kids that cheating is always bad but so many people cheat in the world of sports and in life that it confuses us. So growing up during the height of the “Steroid Era” I saw it firsthand with the cheating in baseball from the 1990s-2000s. You saw a skinny string bean name Sammy Sosa fail with the White Sox, go to the Cubs and look huge hitting home run after home run that were not of the cheap variety but towering ones.
The summer of 1998 was a memorable one for baseball as Sosa and Cardinals first baseman Mark McGuire were chasing the single season home run record set by Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record of 60 by hitting 61 in 1961. It was a great race between the two of them that sparked Barry Bonds of the Pirates to be not just a good player but a great one, inspiring him to “get bigger”.
Those were the biggest hitters of the steroid era and two of the biggest examples of a smaller size player becoming dramatically huge and whose hat size got bigger as an adult.
I personally think if you have the numbers that you obtained artificially you don’t deserve to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yes, you can say that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens had good numbers already but they cheated like the rest of the guys so they don’t deserve it.
I don’t like the cheaters because by inflating their own numbers they inflated the records they surpassed, thereby making guys with just good numbers not look as good, and overshadowing their accomplishments.