by Annie Eitman

Created on: July 27, 2008

Celebrity invites attention. Attention invites jealousy, rumor and innuendo. Add gossip, hearsay, intrigue, and scandal, and you nearly have enough to field a baseball team. Cooperstown has done an amazing job of keeping scandals from infiltrating the Hall. Until now.

Baseball is full of characters. The same personality traits that drive a man to be the best on the playing field can get him in trouble in real life. The same ego that needs to believe he can hit an inside fast ball can lead a player to believe he's above the law, or to get away with things we mortals know we can't.

One of the biggest scandals involved the 1919 Chicago Black' Sox, so named because eight members of the team were accused of throwing the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. It was supposedly masterminded by White Sox first baseman Arnold "Chick" Gandil who had connections to organized crime. There was a rift on the White Sox between the better-educated players and the less-educated the two sides rarely spoke to each other. Gandil, angry at the club's spendthrift owner, Charles Comiskey, pursued and won over the less-educated faction to help implement his plot.

The Black Sox scandal illustrates how difficult it is to pull off something like this in baseball. Too many people were involved, and too many egos and flapping mouths hampered any chance of such a heinous act succeeding undetected. Before the World Series even started, rumors were flying about a thrown' Series, and money was wagered on the Reds so heavily that the odds fell abruptly. By all rights, the White Sox should have been favored to win. The fact that something was up was obvious before the first pitch was thrown. Any chance to reach the Hall was left in the dugout - these eight players were banned for life from baseball.

Many baseball greats are continually bombarded by fans, some of whom need a few lessons from Miss Manners. Ty Cobb was notorious for losing his temper, at least once going into the stands to beat up a fan who had been harassing him. Of course he had no right to do what he did. However, spend a day or two with people constantly screaming epithets at you and you may better understand his behavior.

If you look at the sheer number of people in the Hall of Fame and keep in mind the pressure the baseball lifestyle imposed on these people, the actual number of dark moments is quite low. However, the nightmare keeping Hall of Fame voters awake lately is steroids. We are entering the time when steroid-era players are eligible for Cooperstown. Will Mark McGwire, his angry glare slathered in steroid talk and innuendo, be a candidate? Keep in mind he was hitting home runs before steroids were prevalent. If he used them before they were banned, is he still guilty of something?

Andy Pettitte, star pitcher for the Yankees, disclosed that he used steroids twice to help recover from an injury. At the time they weren't a banned substance shouldn't he still be eligible for the Hall? How will we handle someone who makes it into the Hall of Fame, then later reveals that he used steroids?

Steroids could give Cooperstown its first serious black eye.

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