Like everyone else, I have an opinion about if and why Mark McGwire belongs in the Hall of Fame. Unlike everyone else, I’m not going to elaborate on it, because Will Leitch of Deadspin nails the reason why Big Mac belongs in Cooperstown in one crushing moonshot (read it quick, it’s from the New York Times).

Steroids or not, Big Mac belongs in the Hall of Fame, because players have been using steroids since the 1970’s (anecdotally). Why’d it take someone 37 years to break Roger Maris' single season record? Because it’s not about power alone. It’s about hitting the home runs, staying healthy, getting good pitches to hit, having someone around to push you, and surviving the intense pressure of assaulting one of baseball’s holiest records.

Mark McGwire did that. Mark McGwire, along with Sammy Sosa, helped save baseball from a fate that the National Hockey League is struggling with at this very moment: meaninglessness. For that feat (that and 583 home runs), combined with the fact he did nothing illegal (unlike Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Gaylord Perry, among others), Big Mac deserves to be on that plaque in Cooperstown, and no pompous media assholes are going to tell me otherwise.