Keep Mark McGwire Out of the Hall of Fame!

With the recent controversial induction of Bruce Sutter into the Hall of Fame on Sunday, which in itself is controversial just due to the circumstances surrounding it, this topic should be discussed. Not that Sutter was a bad pitcher, it's just that Lee Smith who is the all time saves leader is NOT in the Hall of Fame yet makes the induction of Sutter questionable. Anyway, in 2007, two things are certain. 1- Tony Gwynn will be inducted. 2- Cal Ripken, Jr. will be inducted. The other "big" name being thrown around is that of Mark McGwire. The mere idea of Mark McGwire sharing the stage with those two LEGENDS of baseball is not only laughable, it's so direspectful to those two guys that it's unimaginable. Let me go through the several reasons that Mark McGwire not only should not be inducted next season, but EVER. For one, he is probably THE most one dimensional player of all time. Of his 1626 career hits (a rather unspectacular number in itself), 583 of those are homeruns. So, over one third of his hits are homeruns. If you wanna induct him, then you should also induct other second rate one dimensional bombers like Ralph Kiner, George Foster, Rob Deer, and Greg Vaughn. To me, a Hall of Famer can do SEVERAL things well. True greatness just drips from both Ripken and Gwynn and I can't even put them in the same universe as McGwire as far as pure baseball ability and career. By the way, in McGwire's final season with St. Louis, he hit .187, batted over .300 just three times and is a career .263 hitter. He also was a VERY AVERAGE first basemen defensively and was known to make silly errors from time to time. In fact, I would dare say that he wasn't even the best first basemen of his era that featured Mark Grace, Will Clark, Fred McGriff, and even Eddie Murray. Also, there's the one thing that I think hurts McGwire the most. According to Jose Canseco (who, with the recent busting of Rafael Palmeiro, looks more and more credible everyday), McGwire was shooting 'roids in his rookie season in which he set the rookie record of 49 homers in 1987. If that's the case, NONE of his homeruns should be without an asterisk. McGwire even admitted to using andro (which is illegal in the NFL, and was later banned by the MLBPA), and always seems to cop excuses of why he doesn't want to talk about steroids use because he "doesn't want to talk about the past". To me that says "I'm freaking guilty". I mean seriously, at least we know that Barry Bonds was clean at least until 2000 when he started on his bulking up, but McGwire was juicing the WHOLE time. So, if all these baseball writers are talking about keeping Bonds out of the Hall of Fame under his cloud of suspicion (and I disagree, because in his time with Pittsburgh, Bonds was quite possibly the best player in baseball) then you almost HAVE to keep out McGwire. America is obsessed with the homerun, but I wouldn't have McGwire on my team if I could help it. Sure, he drew alot of walks, and made America "fall in love with baseball again" when he broke Roger Maris's record (who by the way, is NOT in the hall of fame and I think it's a travesty that he's not) but seriously, how much did he strike out? (1,596) Or ground into a double play? I would much rather have a multi-talented first basemen on my team. Plus, the versatile guys aren't "lifting weights in the bathroom".