Spring Loaded

Pete Rose says baseball’s Hall of Fame has a mess on its hands.

Who better to know that than Rose when it comes to all things Cooperstown?

It doesn’t seem likely, at this point, that Rose will ever see his likeness on a plaque within those hallowed walls because of his gambling addiction, which threatened the integrity of the game.

But if Rose will forever find a “Do Not Enter” sign in his face, what about Barry Bonds?

Or Mark McGwire?

A-Rod?

Rafael Palmeiro?

Sammy Sosa?

Roger Clemens?

Or the newest member of the S Class, Manny Ramirez?

All of the above are either known to have used steroids, or some derivative thereof, or are suspected of having done so.

And what about all of their contemporaries? Anybody who flexed his muscles over the last decade to send a baseball into the seats or fired a pitch that jacked a speed gun up to the high 90s is suspect.

Call it guilt by association, call it unfair, but it’s reality.

If what Rose did damaged the integrity of the game, what about all of this bashing of the home-run record, once the most honored and respected standard in all of sports.

When then-teammate Jeff Kent, defending Bonds, asked how we know Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig weren’t on steroids, we all laughed.

They didn’t have steroids back then. But they did have pine tar, they did have spitballs and they did steal signs.

The New York Giants have been accused of stealing the sign that tipped Bobby Thomson off about what was coming out of the hand of Brooklyn Dodger righthander Ralph Branca in 1951, allowing Thomson to hit “the shot heard round the world,” the pennant-winning blow into the left-field stands at the Polo Grounds.

No one denies that cheating has been a part of the game since Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright or whoever it was who invented the game first put bat to ball.

But few have suggested those cheaters be kept out of Cooperstown.

Not unless they wagered, like the Black Sox, like Rose. That was crossing the line. That was bringing in the gamblers and the possibility of the fix.

Now, we have a generation of players who have brought in the chemists and the syringes and the bionic sluggers.

There’s no keeping them out now. Enact stringent drug testing and some devious medical mind will find a way to mask those devilish substances.

Look at the advances made in performance-enhancing drugs in just the last decade and imagine what it will be like a decade from now. Home run titles are going to be won by players who look like The Incredible Hulk. Cy Youngs will be awarded to guys whose grip will resemble that of Wolverine.

Forget about trying to stand in the way of drug development. It would be like offering anger management to the Hulk.

What about all the dire warnings about what steroids and other body enhancers do to the athlete, about his future prospects for health and longevity?

There’s an apocryphal tale told about Hack Wilson, who still holds the major-league, single-season RBI record with 191, a mark seemingly so far out of reach that it can’t be touched with a ten-foot needle.

Wilson, alleged to have been a serious alcoholic, was supposedly confronted in his clubhouse by two tubs, one containing water, the other alcohol.

Into those tubs, live worms were poured. The worms in the tub of water swam around merrily while the worms in the tub of alcohol soon died.

What does that tell you, Wilson was asked.

That I’ll never die of worms, he replied.

Athletes imagine themselves to be bullet-proof. They are young, they are strong, they are breaking records and making millions of dollars. What could possibly go wrong?

So should baseball simply disqualify a generation of ballplayers, just shut the doors to Cooperstown?

Hardly.

What they should do is shut the door on the old era and label everybody who enters from the mid 90s on part of the S for steroids era.

That would not be unprecedented.

Before juice was added to the ball and Babe Ruth to the New York Yankee lineup, baseball was played in what became later known as the dead-ball era. Frank Baker was the home-run king with 12. Cy Young won 511 games.

That will never happen again, but nobody tried to bar the door to anybody who played after 1920. It was understood that conditions had changed and comparisons to the pre 1920s were silly.

So it should be now. Let Hank Aaron and Roger Maris and Ruth forever be the long-ball kings of the 75 years that began in 1920.

Let the bloated hitters of the steroid era be compared to their peers.

Then, the only ones left out in the cold will be Rose and the Black Sox. For their sins, there will never be salvation.