The Hall of Fame usually avoids controversy like the Bubonic plague, but the ongoing steroids mess has prompted a formal response from the institution’s president. In an e-mail to the Chicago Tribune, Jeff Idelson announced that the Hall has no plans to change its election rules as a way of specifically addressing the issue of steroids. “Election rules are straightforward and include instructing voters to look beyond the statistics and examine a player’s character, integrity and sportsmanship … their overall contribution to the game. To what percentage each quality is weighed is up to each individual voter.” In other words, steroids count in this discussion, but it’s up to each individual writer to decide how much they count. From where I’m standing, especially given the Hall’s longstanding philosophy of including off-the-field behavior as part of its election criteria, that seems like a reasonable and rational approach.

I might, however, be tempted to take Idelson’s pronouncement and push it a step further. The Hall should make it clear to the voters that there must be some evidence of steroid use on the part of a candidate. For example, there needs to be a failed steroids test, formal charges brought against a player, a listing in the Mitchell Report, or some other clear-cut reason (like blatantly stonewalling Congress) for a candidate to be considered a user of performance enhancing drugs. I’m not talking about the level of evidence needed to convict in a court of law, but clearly, rumor and innuendo are not enough.

Some writers, like Joe Posnanski, have been clamoring for the Hall to drop the “character and integrity” clause, especially in response to the steroids issue. Posnanski’s suggestion is designed to clear a Hall of Fame path for people like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez, while reducing the repeated chatter and debate about steroids. Unfortunately, steroids create a complexity of issues that cannot be resolved with one fell swoop. More directly, Posnanski’s suggestion falls short on two counts. First, it’s likely that many of the writers, especially veteran scribes, would disregard the new edict and continue to consider off-the-field considerations like “character,” while continuing to exclude suspected steroid users like Mark McGwire. So at least in the short term, the effect of such a rules change would be nominal. Second, let’s consider a larger issue. Even if some of us do not consider steroid use a moral offense, what about more serious crimes, such as spousal abuse, physical assault, and even murder? To use an extreme example, do we really want someone like O.J. Simpson slithering around the Baseball Hall of Fame during Induction Weekend? I don’t. I want character to count for something.

To this argument, I know that some will counter by saying that the Hall already includes men of questionable “character,” like notorious racist Ty Cobb and confessed spitballer Gaylord Perry. My response? Well, perhaps the writers made a mistake by electing them to the Hall of Fame in the first place. Perhaps there should be a mechanism to remove them (though such a mechanism would be highly problematic and would create a public relations nightmare). But in the meantime, until someone comes up with a better idea than Posnanski’s suggestion, the Hall should continue to include a “character and integrity” clause, emphasizing to the writers that such qualities must be factors in considering a player’s worthiness of induction. They don’t have to be overriding factors, but they should be part of the equation. That seems reasonable to me because the Hall, after all, is about more than just numbers and statistics. Or at least it should be.