ESPN.com
The deadline for baseball's Hall of Fame voters to submit their 2008 ballots is Dec. 31, and once again they must consider the candidacy of Mark McGwire. In his first year of eligibility a year ago, Big Mac garnered only 23.5 percent of the vote, mostly due to suspicions that he took performance-enhancing drugs during his playing career. Will the voters be any kinder this year to the controversial slugger? ESPN.com's Jim Caple and Jerry Crasnick offer opposing points of view during an e-mail debate that we've excerpted below. As you know, Jim, I'm not one of those "he's a cheater, so I'll never vote for him" types. But I took a pass on Big Mac last year, and I'm planning to give him the thumbs down again. We're still smack in the middle of this steroid controversy, and if I have reason to be skeptical about the contents of a man's medicine cabinet, I'm commitment-phobic.