About 30 percent of baseball fans would take PEDs to make $15 million

Mike Oz

With Hall of Fame inductions this Sunday, baseball fans are once again face-to-face with the game’s ongoing moral dilemma: What to do about PED users and even suspected PED users.

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A Hall of Fame without the likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens seems wrong to some fans but rightful and just to others. Likewise, a player like Mike Piazza, who will be inducted Sunday along with Ken Griffey Jr., had a tougher road into Cooperstown because some voters thought he could have cheated. It’s a messy, messy debate.

To get a better handle on this, Yahoo Sports conducted a survey of active MLB fans, asking whether PED users or suspects should be allowed in the Hall of Fame. Here are the results:

(Graphic by Amber Matsumoto)
(Graphic by Amber Matsumoto)

One key takeaway: Baseball writers were more forgiving on the last ballot than this particular electorate, since Bonds was on 44 percent of ballots and Clemens on 45 percent.

Here’s an even more interesting question dealing with baseball and PEDs: Would you cheat? Our survey asked people how likely they would be to take PEDs if they were a career minor leaguer and could make $15 million per year in the big leagues by cheating.

The answer: About 30 percent. You can see it broken down by region below.

(Graphic by Amber Matsumoto)
(Graphic by Amber Matsumoto)

What’s fascinating here is the demographic breakdown: People with a college degree were 15 percent more likely to cheat than people who didn’t have one. Likewise, people who made more money annually were more likely to cheat.

Would you have expected that?

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!