There is a difference between happened with Sheffield (and Clemens/Bonds) and what happened with Arod/Manny. I don't know if being actually caught and punished is better or worse than everyone knowing they cheated without penalty (during their playing days), but there is a difference.
It's true. I mean, I guess that's what's so confounding about this whole process, right? Manny and ARod were busted, they "paid" for their transgression. Bonds, Clemens, etc. were never caught, but they all were "known" to have done PEDs, but they never paid for their sins. And then you have players like Piazza and Bagwell, who looked like the juiced (one sportswriter--I forget which one--seemed to be obsessed with Piazza's back acne as proof) and flew in without a problem. And then you have people who were complicit in this mess like Selig and LaRussa, among others; whom no one gives a crap about. Baseball has fucked this up since Day One and it's no surprise that 500 writers can't agree on what to do.
I was listening to EEI last night and the overnight host (Mutnansky) was screaming that the Cooperstown needs to put whether a player is a PED abuser or not. I think Jeff Passen wrote the same column yesterday. I don't think that that's the right answer either.
Ultimately I think that the right answer is that most fans know which shitty thing that a ball player did and it doesn't need to be on a plaque celebrating his achievements. Cap Anson stopped playing ball almost 95 years before I was born and I know that he's a racist piece of shit. Shoeless Joe hasn't played since 1920 and we know about him. Babe Ruth was a drunk. Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby, not exactly the nicest guy around. Whitey Ford used to cut baseballs, Gaylord Perry spit on them and 90% of the players from the 60s on were on speed.
My point is that no one walks into Cooperstown not knowing who these men are and what they did (on and off the field), it sorta angers me that baseball writers consider us all idiots.
Matsui was also in the category of the bigger the AB, the more dangerous he was, but by the time he got to the US, he wasn't quite in the same league as those other guys.
You can add Paul O'Neil to that list too. If you just think about those lineups for a minute, those Sox and Yankees teams were just stacked. I'm honestly surprised that a game from 2004 isn't still going on right now.