Why Was Mark McGwire Snubbed by the Baseball Hall of Fame?

The Baseball Writers Association of America voted for the candidates who will be enshrined in Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame this past Tuesday and the name of Mark McGwire was not on the list of those selected. McGwire fell far short of the required 75% vote necessary for enshrinement, garnering a mere 23.5% of the 545 votes cast.

To me this is a great injustice to the sport...

Much has been written and said about the reclusive, California-born redhead. He was a lanky kid who had wowed scouts with his sweet swing and 6'5" frame when he joined the Oakland A's in 1986. Before long everyone knew who he was, as McGwire impressed baseball fans of all ages & team affiliations with his Rookie of the Year campaign of 1987. That summer the man who would become known as "Big Mac" crushed a rookie-record 49 home runs with 118 runs batted in while batting a healthy .289 and slugging at a .618 clip. McGwire would go on to average 33 homers and 96 RBIs for the next 5 years and paired with fellow "Bash Brother" Jose Canseco to propel the A's to three World Series appearances and a World Championship in 1989.

After two consecutive sub-par seasons (in 1993-94 Big Mac played in a combined 74 games and hit just 18 homers due to various ailments and the strike of '94) , McGwire began to rebound with a vengeance. In 1995 he amassed 39 homers and 90 RBIs, then exploded for a league-leading 52 long balls and 113 RBIs in 1996. His batting average also climbed to the highest it had been in a full season since his rookie year, .312, after dipping to as low as .201 in 1991. It was also around this time that the once tall, lean SoCal kid began to resemble a thick, bushy Midwestern mountain man. What caused this transformation is at the heart of McGwire's exclusion from the Hall of Fame.

Two-thirds of the way through the 1997 season Oakland shocked the baseball world by trading its masher to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he was reunited with former A's manager Tony LaRussa. McGuire combined to hit 58 homers that season, 34 with Oakland and 24 with St. Louis. By now Big Mac more resembled Paul Bunyan, and it wasn't a big-barreled bat he was swinging but an enormous axe.