For the sake of creating a new argument, take steroids out of the discussion. Do McGwire's numbers alone even make him Hall of Fame material? Logic would say that a guy who has two of the top four home run totals for a season and is 10th all-time in taters is an easy choice, but an argument against the maligned slugger could be made, drugs or no drugs.
Aside from his 583 career home runs, about half of which were hit in September 1998, McGwire brought very little to the table. He is the modern-day Dave Kingman, albeit with better numbers in a handful of categories, and Kingman is often used as a punch-line for jokes made about grossly one-dimensional players.
Anyway, of all the milestones that once guaranteed admission into Cooperstown, the one rendered less significant by the steroid era and a newfound adoration for defense in the game is the 500 home run plateau. Nine players have passed it in recent years. The thing is, many of the others, even those who doped (Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro) offered up so much more than just the long ball.
McGwire did not.
He ranks 466th with 1,626 career hits, a few more than Mike Lowell and just short of Ron Gant, Shannon Stewart and Mark Loretta, to use a few modern examples. He is tied for 604th in career doubles with a collection that includes Jose Offerman, Jose Cruz and the great Germany Smith. Nearly 200 players scored more runs than McGwire, including fellow first basemen Mark Grace, Will Clark, Al Oliver and Andres Galarraga. None of them are very active in Hall of Fame debates, yet they hit an average of 36 points higher than McGwire and averaged roughly 800 more hits than Big Mac. Not to mention far superior numbers in many other categories.
Do home runs matter that much to the voters who have McGwire in discussions where Grace, Clark, Oliver or Galarraga are absent? Can doing one thing extremely well be enough? If that is the case, shouldn’t Vince Coleman get a nod? He led his league in stolen bases six times and ranks sixth all-time. McGwire has four home run crowns and, as mentioned, is 10th overall.
Defense is not always a factor in Hall of Fame voting, unless it involves glove wizards like Ozzie Smith, who get in almost solely for the fact that they played their position better than anyone else. However, if you are on the fence with McGwire, and need a deciding vote, allow his subpar defense to sway you. Big Mac won a Gold Glove once, in 1990. That means almost nothing, and it was also about the only time in his career he could've been considered above average at first base.
Without the glove of, say, Don Mattingly or Keith Hernandez — two superior all-around first baseman who may forever be on the outs in C-Town — and with an unimpressive postseason resume (.217, five home runs in 42 games), we are simply left with a regular-season stat line on which to base McGwire's candidacy. As mentioned, it is incredibly luminous in one category, somewhat impressive in others (he ranks 10th in career OPS and 38th in career walks) and downright ordinary in so many more.
If McGwire backers take the route that this is the Hall of Fame and that historic achievements and notoriety are just as important as career milestones, then Roger Maris should be a shoo-in. Maris had his season to remember in 1961, 37 years before McGwire's, and he owns a 2-0 lead in MVP awards between the two. Neither will be winning another, yet only the younger of the two is in the HOF mix.
If steroids never existed and McGwire had the career he had, he probably would find his way into Cooperstown, eventually. The 1998 season would loom too large in the minds of voters. If that was the case, however, several others whose career numbers are better across the board, with the exception of home runs, would deserve just as much recognition.
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