Jayson Stark, known Barry Bonds Steroid Apologist, calls for the Waaaaaah-mbulance...

(Hat tip to a historian friend for the title.)

Jason Stark has thrown an Official ESPN Hissy Fit.

What should the Hall of Fame be, Mr. Stark?

Well, let's go through your list and see what the Hall of Fame should NOT be!

In Stark's opinion:  "Do we really want to look up, 10 or 20 years from now, and find we've constructed a Hall of Fame that doesn't include:"

• The all-time home-run leader (Barry Bonds)?

Hank Aaron is the all-time home-run leader.  Barry Bonds is disqualified on two bases:  The use of anabolic steroids and the central point of this article.  In the sport of baseball which is to be enshrined in Cooperstown, New York, Barry Bonds hit somewhere in the order of  411 home runs.  (It is believed that Barroids began juicing in response to all the attention Mark McGwire gained for the first illegal assault on Roger Maris' record for a single season.  That number is according to baseball-reference.com and indicates everything through 1998.)

A steroid-ladened freak which showed up in 1999, in a sport which only in field dimensions was baseball, which was actually something else, hit the other 351.

• The pitcher who won the most Cy Youngs in history (Roger Clemens)?

Roger Clemens won, at maximum, four Cy Youngs -- and probably only three..  Somebody else playing another game won the other three or four.  Randy Johnson is the pitcher who won the most Cy Youngs in history, and that's if you believe his wins in 1999-2002 were legitimate.  If not, it's a tie between Steve Carlton and almost-certain 2014 Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, with four.

• The man who broke Roger Maris' storied home-run record (Mark McGwire)?

No one has broken Roger Maris' storied home-run record, legally and playing the game of baseball.  And, frankly, I doubt anyone ever will.  As has been evidenced time and again with spurts of power over the course of years, to even approach 61 home runs in a season requires durability (usually, then, requiring illegal enhancement) and an ability to, by the end of the season, deal with seeing maybe one or two meaningful pitches a game (which see Barroids' walk totals).

• The hitter who had more 60-homer seasons than any player ever (Sammy Sosa)?

 There have been only two 60-homer seasons in the history of baseball.  No one has done it multiple times.

(Please note a pattern here.)

• The greatest hitting catcher in history (Mike Piazza)?

Piazza is an interesting case.  It is widely believed that Piazza was on steroids as a power-hitting catcher.  But, of all the cases, he might well have the least against him, at least as far as interviews or anything else.

Today, Craig Biggio spoke out in stating that he truly believed he should've been a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and that only the indirect "asterisk" I spoke about in the last article on this subject denied him -- that he is now assumed, because of the Steroid Era, to be at least under sufficient suspicion that he, too, was using.

(For the record, he is correct -- and that's why, even if he goes in and even if he is completely clean, there are so few players believed to be clean (which is the main reason we're going to get a number of these null classes in the Hall of Fame over the next 10-15 years) that he will have an invisible "asterisk" next to his plaque, rightly or wrongly.)

• One of four hitters with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs (Rafael Palmeiro)?

3,000 was under the juice directly.  It is almost certain that Palmerroids juiced (and perjured himself to Congress during it!) for the sole purpose of getting to 3,000 hits.  So that's dead too.

• And -- aw, what the heck, might as well throw him in there -- the all-time hit king (Peter Edward Rose)?

Frankly, the ONLY reason Rose should be recognized as The Hit King (if he even is to be recognized as such at all, and his status as "banned from baseball" might force this discussion anyway!) is that, unlike all the other players on this list, his actions came off the field, not having any direct consequence to the record-breaking hit total.

But the fact is that all of the others on the list (perhaps except Piazza, and that's debatable!) should be banned from the game for life to prevent their inclusion in the Hall.

Add Sosa, add all the other roidies.

If that's not satisfactory to you, then maybe Cooperstown needs to close it's doors longer-term.  That is, no one gets elected, at all, for 5-10-15 years.

Because there's one central point that a lot of the apologists do not understand.

So many players juiced, and the results were so obvious, the entire game was not "baseball".

This "Roid-Ball", as I will call it to give it a name, was a separate and distinct entity from the traditions and honorability of baseball which Cooperstown attempts to laud and honor.

Stark:  "Do we really want a Hall of Fame that basically tries to pretend that none of those men ever played baseball? That none of that happened? Or that none of that should have happened?

Hey, here's a bulletin for you: It happened.

The '90s happened. The first few years of the 21st century happened. I saw it with my very own eyeballs. So did you.

It all happened, on the lush green fields of North America, as crowds roared and cash registers rung. It … all … happened."

Mr. Stark:  It may have happened, but it was NOT Baseball, and, hence, has no place in Cooperstown.

It was NOT the sport of Aaron, Ruth, Mays, Gehrig, DiMaggio, etc.

It was NOT the sport of Bench, Schmidt, Brett, Munson, Fernando, etc.

It was NOT baseball.

It was "NOT Sport".

It should not have taken place at all.  Under the RICO Act, Major League Baseball itself should've had it's assets seized for across-the-board commission of racketeering.

(And, yes, it would've qualified under both Drug Trafficking, which was rampant in the locker rooms of MLB, making the teams and franchises culpable, because only an idiot would not believe the franchises knew and accepted rampant drug use in the 1990's and 2000's, but also Obstruction of Justice.  Two such offenses would qualify parties involved of being prosecuted for Racketeering under the RICO Act.)

What scares me is that I could openly see ESPN open, on their own dime, a "Modern Baseball Hall of Fame" to include all the steroid cheats.

But it's not Cooperstown, you crybabying twit.

And the problem is, now, one has to question including ANYBODY else, under the guise that, even as many are intelligent to draw the line, what if they get one wrong?

Just one...

And in that, when Craig Biggio gets the call, it will have an asterisk, whether or not he ever deserved one.