Erase Palmeiro’s Stats?

Frank Robinson said in an interview yesterday that all of Rafael Palmeiro’s stats should be erased because he failed a drug test. This is absurd. So, let’s see, MLB is going to have to go back through every single game that Palmeiro played and remove him from the boxscore. Then they have to determine if any hits, RBI’s or even “productive outs” had an effect on the games. Then I guess if any of his at-bats resulted in the winning or eventual winning run then they have to go back and replay the games (they could use APBA since some guys may be dead) or they could just award wins to the other team. And then based on that the standings will have to be revised and of course the post seasons will have to be replayed and I guess Mitch Williams’ stats will have to be altered as well because you can’t trade somebody that doesn’t exist (you can only trade for somebody that doesn’t exist. See Cubs-Cardinals trade of Lou Brock and Ernie Brogglio). Then perhaps we can give the Phillies the World Series in ’93 because they’d have probably played the Rangers that year since Williams would have saved 70 games for them and instead of Joe Carter hitting a series ending homer of off the ‘Wild Thing’ it would have been Lenny Dykstra. But wait, I think Lenny would have failed a steroid test so he’d have to be erased as well so the Rangers win in ’93 over the Giants because they’d have won 2 more games over the Phillies that season to beat the Braves by a game. Nope, that won’t work either because Barry Bonds was on the Giants and we have to erase him too because of his flaxseed oil and arthritis cream possibly being tainted. Holy cow, where does it end?

What I don’t understand is how come everybody is so bent on calling the Palmeiro’s of the game “cheaters”? I know the definition of cheating can be applied but what baseball rule or policy did they violate? Especially if the majority of players were doing it? If anybody doubts that steroid users were in the minority in baseball up until a year or two ago then I think you’ve got your head in the sand. Why doesn’t anybody get upset about Gaylord Perry? I mean this guys ADMITTED to cheating and he’s proud of it! And he’s in the Hall of Fame! What’s wrong with that picture? Also, I hope I don’t hear Fergie Jenkins, Paul Molitor or Orlando Cepeda chirping about banning steroid users from the Hall. They all have drug histories. Do we toss them? Nobody seems to think we need to toss out stats from the late ’80s when baseball juiced the balls.

I think we need to just step back, relax and let the new policy work. It seems to be doing the trick. I agree that the penalties need to be increased and it looks like they will. It’s just another era in baseball that hopefully has passed.