It is not even a criminal case (which changes nothing ethically, but even if the Hall did have a system to remove people convicted of a crime, that won't be the case here).
Just have something written into the verbiage on the plaque:
While there was no question about Rivera’s dominance on the field, his legacy was tarnished when convicted of … “ something like that.
The Hall of Fame never has done anything like that. And as zambonir noted, there is no criminal charge (yet).
Cepeda’s conviction happened before he was inducted; so the Hall could have included something on his plaque had they wanted to. I’m ok with that as Cepeda reportedly turned his life around after he served his time.
What Cepeda did was nothing close to this.
Not saying it was. Just noting that there is no precedent so far for the Hall of Fame noting off-field crimes (conviction or not) on plaques or their web site. I'm not saying I agree with it, only that the Hall doesn't do it.
And it would be a good time for MLB to rethink things (and other sports for that matter).
Start a new precedent. If MLB is going to ban players for positive marijuana tests and let things like this slide, then MLB is likely a joke.
MLB doesn't run the Hall, and especially doesn't decide who is in or how it is curated.
To me this just shows that conduct and morals should not be considered, period. It all gets too fuzzy. Great player is much easier to determine than great person
So Barry Bonds is a HoFer? Oh wait.
You obviously meant conduct outside of the game. Which is completely wrong.
He's definitely a Hall of Famer in my book, and probably was even if he'd retired in 1999. But that debate at least involves baseball to some extent, in that the ethical transgressions also affected on-field performance (of course the pitchers and defenders were using too).
Really bad behavior by the Commisioner's office. When they claim it was discussed, I wonder with whom and whether these individuals/teams went into the season with a more than marginal advantage. It's insane that everyone in an organization, from owner to GM to manager to coaches to players don't know about a significant rule change. It's B.S. to say the rule wasn't changed if the Commissioner's office working through umpire evaluators and the umpires union effectively shrunk the grey zone by half. Why was this done in secret? Who was informed of the change?
