DL: Mark McGwire is obviously a controversial topic. What went into your decision to mark his name on the ballot?
CS: It's a case where I just feel that he wasn't breaking any rules at the time; he wasn't breaking any baseball rules or any laws. I also think that baseball is just as complicit in the steroids issue as the players are; they turned a blind eye to it as long as people were hitting home runs and the stands were being filled. Baseball didn't want to know. So I feel that, in a lot of ways, baseball used guys like Mark McGwire, and I'm not going to punish him for something that wasn't against the rules at the time.
DL: Why did Lee Smith get your vote?
CS: Smith was one of the last Gossage-type relievers. In the early years of his career he was one of those guys who often went more than one inning to pick up a save, while they're awfully cheap nowadays in comparison. Smith didn't do it as long as Gossage did, but at the time guys often had to pitch one and a third, two and a third, or two innings, so he earned his saves. And over the course of his career, he had a lot of saves.
Baseball Prospectus
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