Baseball Graphs is dedicated to the better use and communication of baseball statistics. Below, you'll find excerpts from, and links to, some of the best baseball writers on the Internet. Follow the links above to read my own intermittent attempts at wisdom (the Baseball Graphs blog), and the heart of this site, historical graphs of every season dating back to 1900.
There are also two special sections you might want to check out. One is the graphical review of the 2003 season, which informed our work at The Hardball Times. The other is the Batted Balls Library, which includes a unique look at batters and pitchers from 2002 through 2005.
I’m pretty sick and tired of reading about McGwire and the Hall vote (and I’ll bet Ripken and Gwynn are tired of it, too). McGwire did break the law (though a relatively minor one; and not against the law in many other countries) and he did something that he knew stood against MLB policy. I don’t hold these issues against him very much, however, because he did so in an environment that didn’t reinforce its policies at all. In fact, several MLB teams made amphetamines freely available; that is, they encouraged this sort of illegal behavior. Shoot, any thinking person should have known that McGwire and Sosa were taking steroids. Those who were expected to enforce those policies, or report the truth, looked the other way. Given those circumstances, I would have voted him in.
The McGwire backlash, it seems to me, has been in direct proportion to the extreme hype he received in 1998. The BBWAA members feel betrayed. Since they built him up, they feel obligated to bring him down. I find this aspect of the whole affair sordid and unseemly.
But I was glancing through Bill James’s Historical Baseball Abstract (the newer one) and came across a comment in the Robin Yount section that seems relevant, concerning his holdout in the spring of 1978.
Almost all scandals, I think, result not from the invention of new evils, but from the imposition of new ethical standards. Same thing with Yount; he wasn’t backing away from baseball; he was just putting the bit in his teeth, accepting new responsibilities. In the biographies of men and nations, success often arrives in a mask of failure.
Perhaps this is worth noting. Perhaps the McGwire Hall of Fame scandal isn’t really about McGwire. It’s about a new standard of ethics being applied to baseball, by writers, fans, management and, hopefully, players. Baseball has a patina of innocence to it, one that doesn’t exist in basketball or football. Obviously, it’s important to the general public that baseball remain that way. What we’re observing is the imposition of a new ethical standard, to make sure baseball maintains its innocent glow.
Let’s hope it takes.