Joe Brescia of the New York Times interviewed Goose Gossage at Yankees Spring Training camp in Tampa.  I was interested in reading the interview because Gossage is a colorful figure with a bloated sense of himself who’s not afraid to speak his mind.  He’s usually good for one or two ridiculous statements.

When asked if Mariano Rivera is the best closer in baseball history — an opinion widely held among those around baseball — Gossage was only too quick to toot his own horn.

“I think that he is a tremendous relief pitcher. He’s the best current-day, modern reliever. But it’s just like you can’t compare the 500-home-run club today to the old 500-home-run club. When I was inducted into the Hall of Fame, I was told that I had 53 saves with seven-plus outs. I was told that Mariano had one and Trevor Hoffman had two. So I think that says it in a nutshell.”

Says what in a nutshell?  I supported Gossage’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame.  I felt he belonged.  But his constant harping on how many two inning saves he got is getting old.  He did his job and he did it well, but that’s not how the game is played anymore.  Mariano Rivera is almost never called on to pitch two innings for a save, so how can Gossage or anyone else draw any conclusion from the fact that Gossage had 53 seven-plus out saves and Rivera only has one?

And by the way, don’t act like you didn’t know how many seven-plus out saves you had, Goose.  Before you were ever inducted into the Hall of Fame, you were criss-crossing the country reciting your stats to anyone that would listen.  No one knows your stats better than you do.

At the end of the interview, Brescia asked Gossage if he thought Mark McGwire should be in the Hall of Fame.  Gossage replied,

“No. And I mean no. In the Olympics when they catch them using performance-enhancing drugs, they strip their medals. I can’t see any difference in baseball. None of the steroid users should get in.”

I’m growing tired of this idea that some people like to spout that before steroids, baseball was as pure as the driven snow.  It is especially maddening when former players — guys who were around for other other types of cheating — float this nonesense.

One of my writing heroes, Joe Posnanski, does a fantastic job of explaining how baseball has always had cheating of one sort or another.  During Gossage’s time, amphetamines were the drug du jour.  Posnanski writes:

“Then there’s amphetamines. I have never understood why many people are so outraged about baseball players’ steroid use and so unperturbed by amphetamine use. I guess it makes some sense on a gut level — injecting yourself with steroids seems so much more villainous than popping a couple of greenies to get a boost. Steroids seemed much more in our faces as fans. The players unapologetically got bigger. A few of them hit an unnatural number of home runs. There seemed a much more direct cause and effect … steroids = bigger muscles = more home runs. And maybe the cause and effect did not seem quite as obvious with the widespread use of amphetamines.

“BUT … is any of that true? Best I can tell, amphetamines (like steroids) were illegal without prescription in American society but were just a part of the baseball culture. Best I can tell, amphetamines are performance enhancing drugs that, many people feel, sharpen focus and increase energy levels and help an athlete overcome exhaustion. Best I can tell, amphetamines can have terrible side effects and can be difficult to quit (and can be extremely dangerous to quit).

“In other words, it seems more or less the same level of cheating and more or less the same level of wrong. As far as whether amphetamines had a huge effect on the game … I don’t know. I don’t want to throw names out there, but there are records and performances — consecutive games played and huge stolen bases totals just as a for instance — that you could logically connect to amphetamine use.”

And just to drive the point home a little further, Gossage was part of a Yankees’ clubhouse that was notorious for it’s use of amphetamines.  I don’t know if Gossage used the drug or not, but he certainly had to know that they were being used.  Maybe that’s how Gossage had the energy to throw so many seven-plus out saves.  Who knows?  But if it is, if Gossage used amphetamines even just one time, should that disqualify him from the Hall of Fame?  Should he be disqualified simply because he played during the amphetamine era?

Goose Gossage and other former players need to take a good, long look at themselves and their contemporaries before they start condemning steroid users and those suspected of steroid use.  Baseball has skeletons in its closet going back to the game’s earliest days.  If the requirement for induction into the Hall of Fame was that you had to be chaste, moral, upright, and pure, the Hall of Fame would be an empty building.