WASHINGTON — Many Americans are more thoughtful when choosing appliances than when choosing presidents, but the baseball writers whose ballots decide who is “enshrined” — more about that verb anon — in Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame are mostly conscientious voters struggling to unravel a knotty puzzle: How to treat retired players who are known or suspected to have used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) while compiling gaudy numbers?
Such chemicals increase muscle mass, thereby increasing hitters’ bat speeds, pitchers’ velocities, and recovery from the strain of training and competing. On Wednesday, two highly probable users, Roger Clemens (third-most career strikeouts, seven Cy Young awards) and Barry Bonds (career and season home run records, seven MVP awards) reached 54.