OT: Hank Aaron has died.

Yes, I am sure it was ENTIRELY a coincidence.

And all the elderly dying after getting the injection - even while in a coma and against their wills...but the explanation is they were "old anyways".  

Oh fer fucks sake.  A lot of us have some great memories of Hank.  Let us enjoy them.  Save your anti-vac stuff for a thread over at tinfoilhats.com

I don't want to detract for recognition of a great man and great baseball player in this thread.  I also am not defending the PED use.  But I would challenge you to define the "PED era" when it is unclear when it started, how many were using it (most), how much it helped, etc.  When the previous era of players were popping amphetamines like candy and medical science has advanced to where guys were getting pain killing shots to keep playing it is pretty hard to tell what the "PED era" is.  It is also hard to exclude an entire era of the game when it was a part of history and the pitchers were using just as much as the hitters.  

To me, you don't exclude people when there are so many other issues associated with past and future HOF.  You instead acknowledge it for what it was - good and bad.  You don't take away from Aaron's accomplishments by recognizing that Bonds had a great career as well - with the help of PEDs while facing guys like Clemons who also used PEDs.  

I'm not sure there is a solution for reconciling the records over time. 

My thoughts are this:

- Hank Aaron is the Homerun king. I think the way he achieved the record must be taken into account. Consistency and longevity. 15 years with 30+ homeruns. Not one season over 47. 

- Yes, Barry Bonds used PED's. But I watched him play live multiple times as well as many other greats, and Barry had the quickest rotation of his body combined with hands that I have ever seen. He also performed to the moment in the later half of his career (not his time in Pittsburgh). While PED's can turn a warning track fly into a homer and can help an athlete recuperate to perform better over a 162 game season, unlike other sports, there is a skill to square the bat up with the ball and I question how much steroids impacts that. Barry doesn't win the homerun title without PED's, but he probably finished top 6 or 7. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough for him. Especially the single season record which was being destroyed by other PED users.

Let me be clear, I'm not absolving or advocating for Barry. I do think he was a very talented player who's ego succumbed to cheating.

I tend to side with Jay Jaffe's take on PEDs...

I believe that voters should distinguish between PED use that came during baseball’s “Wild West” era — when it took a complete institutional failure on the part of the players’ union, team owners, the commissioner, and the media to prevent a coherent drug policy from being implemented — and use that came after testing began in 2004 (though the first penalties weren’t imposed until ’05). From what we know, Bonds’ usage occurred in the context of many other dopers, pitchers as well as hitters. He is a none-too-flattering reflection of the era in which he played. Even so, he’s no Lance Armstrong or Ryan Braun, PED users who intimidated or smeared those who gave evidence against them.

If you want to play the “He was a Hall of Famer before he touched the stuff” game, consider only what Bonds did through 1998: His 411 homers, 1,917 hits, 445 steals and .290/.411/.556 line were good for 99.9 career WAR (which would rank third among left fielders), 62.6 peak WAR (second), and 81.3 JAWS (third behind Williams and Rickey Henderson). That’s still a Hall of Famer.

Asterisk sure - purged hell no.  We need to understand the cohorts as they hit.  If you saw Bonds play, saw his dad play, lived in that time ... put an asterisk on it, write it down, understand it for what it was.  Barry was dominant.  Sure, due to PED use... also having grown up in a MLB batting cage with mentors who were themselves HOFers and having considerable natural talent.

The Hall should be a reference for history not a lens.  People who interpret the HOF in terms of PED use, race or nationality are missing the game which exists outside these things.  I want to celebrate the game first and foremost.  All the other stuff is mixed in without any real hope of separation outside of interpretation.

How high the mound should be, what is in the ball or bat, PED use, Tommy John surgery, artificial joints, AI driven defensive alignments... that is all for the rules.  The HOF should just be a record.  People who played under the rules should be put in.  Asterisks applied.  Exhibits put that explain - as they currently do for the Negro League.

I don't want to have to bring googles to the HOF to keep out what really happened.  Write it down, put a bird on it, move on.

Absolutely. Death threats naming the game they were going to kill him. Threatening his family. The Braves hired a cop to guard him, had to sneak him into stadiums. Screaming from the stands. White folks spitting anger, calling him names because he dared to beat a white guy's record.

Aaron had endure personally, while playing at a high level—the highest level—professionally.

Absolutely a better argument.  Willie Mays is the best all-around ballplayer ever, period.  Not only did he have all five tools, but he was about the best in each of them.  Hammering Hank's greatest feat was his consistent power over time. 

I love those 1974 Braves uniforms.  They changed them up in 1972 partly because Hank’s favorite color was blue.  One of my favorite ball caps too.

He admitted to taking one - and said he didn't like the way it felt.  There is no evidence or statments or claims that he ever took more.  Barry, OTOH...

If I'm not mistaken, he said he tried it once and didn't like it.  But now I'm curious and will have to read about it.

Not that I condone any of it but greenies =/= steroids and growth hormones