Time and perspective

They're going to get in, eventually. Cooperstown might as well start crafting the plaques now.

Raise a glass now to the 2019 baseball Hall of Fame class, led by the greatest reliever of all time, Mariano Rivera, who sank a dozen pro forma columns when he became the only player in the Hall's history to be unanimously inducted. So, no need for the standard This Guy Should Lose His Vote For Not Voting For (Inductee Name Here) outrage.

Lost in the deserved celebrating of Rivera and the others, however, was this little nugget: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens both pulled just shy of 60 percent in the voting. Seventy-five gets you in.

So, yes, they're going to get in. And should.

This is because a Hall of Fame without one of the top five players of all time and the greatest pitcher of his generation is a Hall of Fame made of tin, and that's all there is to it. And the further time takes us from the Steroids Era, the more evident that becomes.

This is what time does, after all. It lends perspective. Widens the lens. Enables us to see what we couldn't see before, because we were too close to it and unable to see the forest for the trees, literally as well as figuratively.

In 2019, therefore, that both Bonds and Clemens likely used performance-enhancing drugs during the Steroids Era makes them products of their time as much as anything else. If they were juiced, so were a lot of guys; the late Ken Caminiti, himself a juicer, estimated as much as 80 percent of MLB was ingesting or injecting some sort of magic beans. That might be a tad high, but it's probably in the general vicinity.

Yes, it was a cheat. Yes, it rendered a lot of their numbers artificial. But the Hall is full of cheaters -- how many players in the '60s, '70s and '80s were gobbling amphetamines like M&Ms to get them through day games after night games? -- and baseball's numbers have always been subject to distortion. How many home runs does Babe Ruth hit if he'd been playing against more than just white guys?  How many immortals' numbers would have been different if they'd had to play night games? Would Christy Mathewson or Walter Johnson had won as many games if they'd played in an era when the ball was livelier and there was such a thing as middle and long relief?

Something to think about.

And in Bonds' and Clemens' cases, there is this: Because it's fairly well documented exactly when they allegedly began juicing, we can say for a certainty that both were already Hall of Famers before they so much as touched a needle or a pill or the Cream or the Clear. So the point of keeping them out because of that is moot.

And as the Blob has said before, it's an easy fix. If it's such a moral dilemma, you simply insert a line onto each of their plaques: "Some of his numbers were accrued during what is known as the Steroids Era."

So much for the dilemma.

And, sooner than we probably think, so much for having to write all this again.