Inside the Phillies: Steroids era complicates Hall of Fame vote

The arrival of the Hall of Fame ballot in the mail used to be a highly anticipated event in my household.

I couldn't wait to see the first-time names because memories of those players would come rushing back. I looked forward to exploring the names and numbers on the ballot before deciding who I thought was deserving of a spot in Cooperstown.

Now, thanks to the taint of the steroid era, the arrival of the ballot brings dread instead of anticipation, suspicion instead of admiration.

For the second straight year, I look at Jeff Bagwell's name and wonder if he beat the system while he was also pounding baseballs out of ballparks all across the country. I'd love to vote for him, because he was always a class act whenever I had to interview him and his numbers scream Hall of Famer.

Mark McGwire, Juan Gonzalez, and Rafael Palmeiro remain on the ballot as documented cheaters, and I don't vote for them even though their numbers also are Hall of Fame-worthy.

I've listened to the argument that Bagwell should be a Hall of Famer because there is no proof he used the same performance-enhancing drugs that inflated the heads, bodies, and resumés of some of his peers. I suspect, however, that there are a lot of players who cheated and never were caught. We're going to see many of those names on the Hall of Fame ballot in the near future.

Next year, for example, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, and Craig Biggio are going to be among the first-time candidates. Based solely on their bodies of work, they all deserve to be first-ballot inductees. That fact alone says something about the steroid era because there have never been more than three first-ballot inductees in the same year, and that happened only once.

It will be fascinating to see how many of those guys, if any of them, get in next year.

Curt Schilling will also be on the ballot for the first time and he was arguably the most outraged and outspoken player about steroid use. During a 2007 interview with Bob Costas, Schilling claimed players should be stripped of their awards if they were caught cheating. More recently, during an interview with Dan Patrick he said steroid users do not belong in the Hall of Fame and "of the top 10 hitters and pitchers in my generation, over half of them are cheats."

I would love to see a survey of current Hall of Famers who feel the same way.