![]() “He was relentless in that cause.”Īnson repeatedly refused to take the field if the opposing roster included black players. “Cap Anson helped make sure baseball’s color line was established in the 1880s,” Thorn said of the Chicago Cubs first baseman and manager who was enshrined in the Hall of Fame the year it opened in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1939. Cohen, who wrote the 2009 book “Baseball Hall of Fame - or Hall of Shame?”, readily recalled a catalog of reprehensible acts by Hall of Fame inductees.Ĭobb, who was included on 222 of 226 ballots during the inaugural 1936 Hall of Fame voting, is far from alone when it comes to baseball elite old-timers and imputations of racism, some of them blatant, recurring and historic. ![]() In the spirit of Groucho Marx, who refused to join any club that would have him as a member, would not baseball’s 77-year-old gallery of rogues be the perfect fit for Bonds and Clemens? ![]() But drawing an integrity line in the sand is a tenuous stance at a Hall of Fame with a membership that already includes multiple virulent racists, drunks, cheats, brawlers, drug users and at least one acknowledged sex addict. Players linked to steroid use have been resoundingly rejected by Hall of Fame voters in recent years, shunned as synthetically enhanced frauds. For the first time this year, balloters must weigh the fate of two eminent stars, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who are also the most celebrated poster boys for the game’s disgraced steroid era. ![]() The Baseball Hall of Fame, the most august fraternity of its kind in American sports, unveils its latest induction class Wednesday. ![]()
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