We need a Steroid User Hall of Fame

The news that Roger Clemens is being indicted for perjury in a steroid investigation set off another round of hand-wringing among baseball’s ivory tower purists.

You know the ones. They engage in tedious discussions about who does or does not belong in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Gatekeepers, mostly professional sportswriters, feel honor bound to keep it free from taint. They won’t vote all-time hit king Pete Rose in for gambling and have shown a stout aversion to keeping out greats like Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and now Roger Clemens. There’s no chance any of them will ever be deemed hall worthy.

This is perfectly understandable. It’s outrageous to me that the great and dignified Hank Aaron’s home run record is now second to a sullen cheater like Bonds. And I like baseball nut/historian/documentarian Ken Burns’s suggestion that Rose should  not be admitted until the day after he dies.

This solution would serve the dual benefits of denying Rose the chance to gloat for even one day and it would save the rest of us from having to see his awful haircut ever again.

But a big part of me feels the achievements of the steroid cheaters should be celebrated.

I was there for all of it. My most rabid baseball fandom occurred during what is being called The Steroid Era, or might I suggest, The Steroid Error.

Because everyone -- the players, the owners, the unions, the fans, the broadcasters -- we were all complicit.

As one popular promo from the times said, “Chicks dig the long ball.”

So did the rest of us.

I leapt to my feet when McGwire hit no. 62. I loved watching him and the now pale-skinned Sammy Sosa slug it out. I was awed as guys like light-hitting Brady Anderson went from 16 homers in 1995 to 50 the next year and back to 18 in 1997. And watching Bonds demolish long-standing home run records was impressive.

These accomplishments, however tainted, should be memorialized.

That’s why baseball needs a Steroid User Hall of Fame.

The Cooperstown hall is a Colonial brick structure with few architectural flourishes

The Steroid User HOF in, of course, Las Vegas, needs to make the Taj Mahal look like a Holiday Inn Express. The facade will be done in cheap stucco to mimic the acne-ravaged skin symptomatic of long-time steroid users.

Like the juiced players it will be built to honor, it should be massive and tasteless and devoid of any presumption of adherence to local building codes.

Enter at your own risk, because the Steroid User HOF will be structurally unsound.

The baseball hall of fame has plaques featuring bas relief faces of the players above straight forward recitations of their on-field accomplishments.

The Steroid User HOF will borrow a page from the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where neck-up busts of the players line the halls.

But the Steroid User HOF will go one better, or two, actually.

Each honored player will have two statues, one from his rookie year and one from the day of his indictment or other infamy.

Imagine the picture taking opportunities besides the Bonds rookie and the Bonds retired/indicted statue. Human growth hormones made Bonds’s hat size leap from 7 1/8 to 7 1/2, an increase of one inch in circumference to his shaved head.

The Vegas hall could include a wing for miscreant ball players like Rose and others who excelled while battling gambling, booze or sex addictions. Determining these players is still a highlight of our early summer games when the All-Star ballots are passed around the ballparks.

While other fans select all stars based on hitting, fielding, or arm strength, we highlight the hungover and make votes for a team we call the Betty Ford All Stars.

Instead of a traditional gift shop, the Steroid User HOF will have a pharmacy where customers can purchase many of the supplements that MLB deemed perfectly safe and legal when fans were paying to see the sluggers go to work.

In honor of counterfeit home run king Barry Bonds price of admission will be $762, a dollar for each home run Bonds hit.

But the Steroid User Hall of Fame building will feature numerous unguarded entrances and visitors will be encouraged to find creative and illegal ways to sneak in.

The only real way to get into the Steroid User Hall of Fame will be to cheat.

The Bucs need Barry Bonds

It’s time, for the good of the game, to bring baseball’s most disgraced player back to baseball’s most disgraced franchise.

Yes, it’s time to bring Barry Bonds back to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Bonds, who turned 46 on July 24, is under federal indictment for charges stemming from his enthusiastic embrace of performance enhancing drugs. He without fanfare retired after the 2007 season just 65 hits shy of one of baseball’s most hallowed landmarks, the 3,000 hit club. Only 27 men in history have achieved the milestone.

The Pirates, his old team from 1986-92, should offer him a one-year contract with the goal of him becoming the third Pirate to get 3,000 hits. The pursuit would be one of the most comical and compelling spectacles sport has ever witnessed.

The often vacant stands at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park would overflow with fans eager to alternately cheer and heckle the surly, tired old slugger. Pirate fans, me included, still haven’t forgiven him for his many villainies.

He was a joyless mope, he couldn’t hit in the clutch and -- worst of all -- he failed to throw out a gimpy legged Sid Bream in the most heartbreaking playoff loss in Pittsburgh history.

A golden era of baseball was passing, a grim new one dawning. Rampant greed and performance enhancing drugs were about to ravage the game as never before.

For the Pirates, the long, steep decline started with the departure of Bonds’s buddy, Bobby Bonilla. The erratic right fielder left Pittsburgh for the hated New York Mets. The Pirates had offered him $25 million for five years (today four players make in excess of that per year).

Bonilla demurred saying he “needed to take care of his family,” a contention that led flabbergasted Bucco manager Jim Leyland to blurt out, “His family? For $25 million, he could take care of Guam!”

It was the early 1990s. Gasoline was $1.09 per gallon, phones were still tethered to walls and the only Cyrus tormenting American pop culture was Billy Ray and his Achy Breaky Heart.

In fact, Mylie Cyrus, born November 23, 1992, has never drawn breath while the once venerable Pirates, winners of five World Championships, were winners. No team in professional sports has ever gone as long without a winning season.

The news probably wouldn’t trouble the singer whose song, “Party in the USA” brought my daughter, 9, to her feet yesterday as we watched the feckless home team lose to the San Diego Padres 6-3.

Tell folks you’re taking a 9-year-old girl to watch the Pirates and many, my wife and mother included, will look at you like you like you left a dainty poodle in the car at noon with the windows rolled up.

They think it’s inhumane.

Nonsense. I adore baseball. I knew, win or lose, my daughter would enjoy the festivities -- and that’s without even getting her drunk on $7.25 warm Bud Lights.

Skeptics say baseball’s boring. I believe the world could do with a little more mandatory boredom. 

Baseball invites fans to be as focused or as distracted as they like. I’ve been to games where I was so focused I actually kept a score sheet detailing the result of every pitch. And I’ve been to games where I was so distracted by related activities that I’ve dozed through the final innings, the long ride home and didn’t learn the outcome until past noon the next day.

Of course, there’s nothing like being in a city when the baseball team’s compelling. Every pitch counts. It unites even the most beleaguered of cities.

That’s what would happen overnight in Pittsburgh if the Pirates signed Bonds, even if it was to pinch hit his way to 3,000.

It would be the talk of the sporting world. And it would be mutually beneficial to both Bonds and the Pirates.

Bonds, as the most hated man in baseball, would have a chance to redeem his dismal reputation. Perhaps he’s eager for another shot at those 65 tantalizing hits to 3,000.

The Pirate would sell tens of thousands of tickets, and I’m sure Bonds would agree to play for the league minimum.

It’s not like he has to take care of Guam or something.

Designated Steroid User

Major League Baseball’s immersing itself in another hand-wringing episode over steroids and I’m once again left chagrined that my influence is so miniscule.

In fact, since the dog died, I can’t think of a single carbon-based entity that bends at all any of my wise suggestions.

My kids think I’m nuts. My wife tunes me out. My friends, even the drunks, don’t pay my ideas any attention.

Can you believe it?

And, of course, neither does Major League Baseball. That’s a pity because four years ago I offered a sensible compromise solution to the torturous problem of performance enhancing drugs laying waste to long cherished records.

Here it is:

Every Major League Baseball team gets a designated steroid user. As a purist, I’ve always loathed the designated hitter rule. That abomination could be banished and replaced with one player who is sanctioned to take as many performance-enhancing drugs as he can handle without collapsing in the batter’s box from heart failure.

There would be no need to asterisk sacred baseball records because baseball would have created an entirely new category: most home runs by a steroid user.

This would have the added benefit letting the medical community carefully study what happens when players ingest the sort of steroid overdoses that turn lab rats into a tiny Clydesdales.

I saw Barry Bonds play hundreds of games in Pittsburgh back when he was drug-free. The most remarkable change in him, to me, wasn’t the overall body size, but how much larger his head has grown. One book says his hat size grew from 7 1/8 to 7 1/2, a spurt that added an inch in circumferance to his noggin.

Sign him up as a designated steroids user and study the results. Who know? Maybe with prolonged use, maybe his brain will get bigger and bigger, too. Think of the possibilities:

“And in today’s news, Barry Bonds was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize bringing surprising peace to warring parties in the Middle East and between Yankee and Red Sox fans in the American League East.”

Commissioner Bud Selig’s even talking about going over the record book from the past 15 years, in effect wiping away some of my greatest memories from hundreds of games I’ve attended.

If that’s the case, I’m going to have to come up with a whole new non-steroid hightlight reel from those once golden years to replace the counterfeits. So here it is:

• April 8, 1991 -- Fuss bucket property owners erected a 10-foot chainlink fence between Three Rivers Stadium and Zagnuts bar. Our options included walking nearly 100 yards out of the way (unacceptable), waiting for an enterprising fan to shear a hole in the fence (might take hours), or scale the fence after already consuming too many ballpark beers. Three of us made it, but my big buddy Paul snagged his pants on a spur and ripped a hole that went clear from ass to ankle. He begged us to take him home so he could change. We did. Six hours and about four bars later.

• May 20, 1991 -- Many devoted baseball fans go their entire lives without ever snagging a foul ball. I caught one about two hours after my friends ridiculed me for giving $5 to a homeless man whose sign said “God Will Bless You For Your Donation.” My blessing ricocheted off a facade and came like a laser right between my eyes. I was holding a beer right handed and deftly caught the sizzler with my left. Didn’t spill a drop. The stadium erupted in cheers. Catching just one foul ball is one of the great tiny joys in life.

• Sept. 30, 1992 -- I used my newspaper press pass to gain free admission for me and three buddies into a playoff game. Then I took our four tickets, scalped them for an indecent profit and used the same press pass to get back in again for free. The ethics of this chicanery are, I admit, shameful. But so is charging me and my thirsty buddies up to $7.50 for a glass of beer so I have no regrets.

• June 20, 1993 -- We saw Barry Bond’s future ex-wife, the lovely Sun Bonds and Barry’s children, buying nachos at a Three Rivers concession stand with a microscopic portion of the $20 million or so Bonds was earning to play baseball. She fumbled a quarter and two dimes that fell into the filth at her feet. We watched in amazement as she ordered one of the kids to dig through the slop to get the change. Paul said, “Now be sure to give that to your Daddy.”

• May 17, 1994 -- I caught another foul ball.

• July 7, 1997 -- We heckled N.Y. Mets ballplayers and Dwight Gooden, Bobby Bonilla and Vince Coleman with such profane vigor that the trio of felonious bums actually looked up from the dugout, pointed and laughed at us. I don’t remember a single thing I said, but it was the only time in my life when I’ve understood the religious phenomenon of people speaking in tongues.

• August 26, 1999 -- I snagged my third foul ball.

• Sept. 24, 2003 -- I met my father for a Pirate game at Atria’s, a great bar in PNC Park, the Pirates shiny new stadium. We shook hands and made small talk with Steeler great Franco Harris who was in the bar being a friendly legend. After that I figured out a way to sneak into the new ballpark that we’d thought was impregnable to ticket cheats like me and my dad. It was the last ballgame I ever saw with Dad. There’s something about sneaking in that makes a $7.50 beer taste better.

And I can’t forget to mention Sept. 28, 2000. It was three days after the birth of our daughter, Josie, and the second to last ball game in the history of Three Rivers Stadium (yep, I attended the last one, too). My wife was furious.

My brother Ronald said, “I can’t believe you went to a baseball game three days after your first child was born.” I rationalized it by saying, “Hey, it was souvenir snowglobe night.”

He understood.

I’m staring at that lovely little snowglobe on my desk as I finish up this post. It means a lot to me.

Sure, it doesn’t consider any of my suggestions, but it’s never sassed me, either.