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By JOSEPH WHITE
AP Sports Writer
Published: Friday, April 13, 2012 12:10 AM CDT
WASHINGTON— Steroid use shouldn't keep baseball's best sluggers and pitchers out of the Hall of Fame, the head of the players' union said Wednesday.
Michael Weiner told the National Press Club he thinks the Hall "is for the best baseball players that have ever played." The executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association also said he thinks Pete Rose should be in the Hall despite Rose's history of gambling — just as team executives aren't barred for engaging in collusion against the players in the 1980s.
"It's a museum," Weiner said. "If you want to have some notation on their plaque that indicates that they were either judged to have used performance enhancing substances or accused of having done that, so be it."
Weiner said he was speaking his personal opinion and not an official position of the union.
"There will be people in the Hall of Fame who have been judged by several arbitrators to have engaged in a massive conspiracy called collusion to defraud the fans of free competition," Weiner said. Those people belong in the Hall of Fame as well. So, from my perspective, the Hall of Fame is for the best baseball players and most influential executives that have been involved, and they should all be in."
Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, two of the most prominent names from baseball's steroids era, have fallen far short of earning enough votes for the Hall despite career statistics that would otherwise have made them shoo-ins. Roger Clemens, who is eligible for Hall induction in 2013, goes on trial next week on charges he lied to Congress when he denied using steroids and human growth hormone.
Baseball is enjoying an extended run of labor peace following an agreement on a five-year collective bargaining agreement in November, giving Weiner leeway to address a number of topics without his every word being parsed in light of a possible work stoppage. He even took advantage of the non-sports setting to venture into political territory, criticizing measures that have stripped public employees of collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and Indiana.
"It's just not true that state and municipal employees making $40,000 per year caused the present fiscal crisis. ... The economic health of our country will not be revitalized by depriving workers of their voice," Weiner said. "In 2011, baseball demonstrated that collective bargaining can produce progressive and productive agreements if each party respects both the power and the ideas of its counterpart."
AP Sports Writer
Published: Friday, April 13, 2012 12:10 AM CDT
WASHINGTON— Steroid use shouldn't keep baseball's best sluggers and pitchers out of the Hall of Fame, the head of the players' union said Wednesday.
Michael Weiner told the National Press Club he thinks the Hall "is for the best baseball players that have ever played." The executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association also said he thinks Pete Rose should be in the Hall despite Rose's history of gambling — just as team executives aren't barred for engaging in collusion against the players in the 1980s.
"It's a museum," Weiner said. "If you want to have some notation on their plaque that indicates that they were either judged to have used performance enhancing substances or accused of having done that, so be it."
Weiner said he was speaking his personal opinion and not an official position of the union.
"There will be people in the Hall of Fame who have been judged by several arbitrators to have engaged in a massive conspiracy called collusion to defraud the fans of free competition," Weiner said. Those people belong in the Hall of Fame as well. So, from my perspective, the Hall of Fame is for the best baseball players and most influential executives that have been involved, and they should all be in."
Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, two of the most prominent names from baseball's steroids era, have fallen far short of earning enough votes for the Hall despite career statistics that would otherwise have made them shoo-ins. Roger Clemens, who is eligible for Hall induction in 2013, goes on trial next week on charges he lied to Congress when he denied using steroids and human growth hormone.
Baseball is enjoying an extended run of labor peace following an agreement on a five-year collective bargaining agreement in November, giving Weiner leeway to address a number of topics without his every word being parsed in light of a possible work stoppage. He even took advantage of the non-sports setting to venture into political territory, criticizing measures that have stripped public employees of collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and Indiana.
"It's just not true that state and municipal employees making $40,000 per year caused the present fiscal crisis. ... The economic health of our country will not be revitalized by depriving workers of their voice," Weiner said. "In 2011, baseball demonstrated that collective bargaining can produce progressive and productive agreements if each party respects both the power and the ideas of its counterpart."