Can baseball avoid an error on Latino players?

In many Latin American countries, the same steroids that are banned in major league baseball can be bought over the counter like aspirin or toothpaste. It is unlikely that players from those countries can be made to believe that using them is immoral. Is it cheating? Well, baseball cheating is as old as Babe Ruth's corked bat and as winked-at as Gaylord Perry's spitball. Ruth and Perry are in the Hall of Fame, part of a vast roster of immortals who used stimulants, downers and booze to help them perform, heal and get through the stress of major league competition.

A lot of the players on deck for the Hall of Fame fall into this category, and many are Latino. Just the other day, home-run slugger Sammy Sosa was revealed to have tested dirty in a 2003 drug test. Alex Rodriguez has admitted using. Manny Ramirez is under suspension for chemical enhancement. Rafael Palmeiro failed a test in 2005. Shortstop Miguel Tejada was named in the Mitchell Commission report.

In the past, the Hall of Fame has shown a lack of acuity in dealing with Latino baseball. It put the wrong name on Clemente's plaque, for example. And a few years ago, it invited Citgo -- a subsidiary of the Venezuelan national oil company controlled by dictator Hugo Chavez -- to sponsor the exhibit on Latin American baseball. That idea was dropped after Chavez appeared at the U.N., compared President George W. Bush to the devil and described the U.S. as an imperialist aggressor engaged in "domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world." Shortly thereafter, Chavez described major league baseball as being one of the leading yanqui exploiters. The invitation to Chavez, followed by the disinvitation, sent the message that the Hall of Fame couldn't tell one Spanish-speaker from another or simply didn't think it mattered. Eventually, the Hall of Fame's president, Dale Petrosky, lost his job over the fiasco, but board Chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark, the Hall's real decider, is still in place.

Hopefully Clark and her tame board of directors have learned something. The Baseball Hall of Fame is an iconic American institution, and what it does matters, especially on issues of race and ethnicity (and, coming soon, gender and sexual orientation).

The new Latino exhibit, which is not sponsored by a crazed anti-American dictator, is a good start. But the real test will come in the near future, when Latino greats of the 1980s and 1990s become eligible for induction. Latinos are probably the most passionate fans baseball has left, and Latino stars are their heroes. Cooperstown and its appointed electors, the baseball writers, need to think hard about what it would mean to put up new obstacles to their inclusion.