Joe Morgan says anyone who used steroids doesn’t belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He says, “By cheating, they put up huge numbers, and they made great players who didn’t cheat look smaller by comparison, taking away from their achievements and consideration for the Hall of Fame. That’s not right.” This isn’t controversial, it’s common sense. Society creates gray areas (he only used once, he never officially tested positive, everyone in that era was juicing, etc.) to justify and rationalize bad behavior. There’s no gray area here. MLB can simply close the door on the entire subject by following the lead of Joe Morgan. And the gray area contingent will accuse baseball of being a stodgy old man who won’t change with the times … and so what? Cheaters don’t get in. Next question. If you want “gray area,” if you want to make up the rules as you go, if you want to stand for vagueness instead of greatness, well, that’s what the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is for.

Then there’s Bobby Doerr. Babe Ruth thought Bobby Doerr should have been the American League MVP in 1946, but he got beat out by teammate Ted Williams. Doerr wouldn’t have cared, he was used to being overshadowed by Williams and they were best friends. Bobby Doerr’s recent passing gives me the chance to talk about a guy who did things the right way (and to make a reading suggestion).

Bobby Doerr was from Los Angeles and was a fine all-around athlete. He signed with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League when he was sixteen and when the team moved to San Diego and became the Padres in 1936, he met Ted Williams for the first time. He made his major league debut with the Boston Red Sox in 1937. He would go on to earn the nickname the “silent captain” because he led by example and did his job. Doerr was a lifetime .288 hitter who hit over .300 three times. He hit .406 in the 1946 World Series and in 1948 he had 414 consecutive chances at second base without an error, setting a record for fielding percentage (.993) that lasted sixty years. When he retired at age thirty-three, his 1,865 appearances was a Red Sox record. He was elected to the Hall in 1986, no cheating, no bullshit, no gray area.

Bobby Doerr had a storied relationship with the mercurial Ted Williams. Williams was famously hot-headed, but he loved Doerr. On the rare occasion when Williams would slump at the plate, the only one who dared approach him and offer advice was Doerr. When Williams was troubled or depressed or pissed, the only thing that seemed to help was going for a walk with Doerr. The two argued about hitting for half a century with Williams theorizing that, since the mound was elevated, the perfect swing had to be a slight uppercut (at exactly thirteen degrees), while Doerr asserted that a level swing was best and that too many players swung over the top of the ball because of the uppercut.

Williams and Doerr argued about baseball, about fly fishing, about the way a grapefruit ought to be sectioned … that’s what friends do. David Halberstam wrote a wonderful book about that relationship, The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship. In fact, the book is about a four-way friendship between Boston Red Sox teammates Doerr, Williams, Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky. They were all West Coast kids, played for the Sox and remained close for more than sixty years – Doerr is the last to die. The book is a very short read and well worth the effort.

In a hall of fame baseball career or a hall of fame life, there are certain people who set an example, who provide a template for how we should act. Those people, Joe Morgan, Bobby Doerr, others, have established a standard that steroids or political correctness or a lazy society should never be allowed to turn gray.