When Barry Bonds finally breaks Hank Aaron’s Major League career home run record, the only question left for columnists and sports talk shows to ponder will be whether his alleged steroid use should keep him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is the identical issue facing Sammy Sosa who recently notched his 600th career home run. To spare all the blather and moralizing, there is a solution that will end the controversy once and for all. But it requires updating the Hall of Fame for the 21st Century along the lines of another familiar American tourist attraction - Elvis Presley’s mansion, Graceland.

Graceland was created so visitors could appreciate the different facets of Elvis’s life and, as one Graceland Website suggests, “find their own inner Elvis”. Fans are invited find that inner Elvis by visiting his favorite rooms in the mansion, rooms he created according to his different moods. Depending on your tastes, you can spend time at a meditation chapel to reflect on the King’s greatness, a trophy room to see his gold records, a television room to see where he blasted out a TV featuring rival singer Robert Goulet and the ever-popular jungle room, lined from floor to ceiling with green shag carpeting, designed for who knows what.

The simple beauty of this plan should be the template for the new, improved Baseball Hall of Fame. In order to appeal to visitors’ different interests, the Hall should create special wings reflecting players’ behavior in the manner of Elvis’s mood rooms. Current Hall members would be reassigned, and new members admitted, to sections that would feature a Steroid Wing, a Gamblers’ Wing, an Excessive Eating/Binge Drinking Wing, A Cheaters’ Wing and a Straight Arrow Wing.

The Steroid Wing would consist of two rooms, the first for proven steroid users with those stars caught in the current baseball drug investigation and Rafael Palmeiro (569 career homers) as charter members. This room would serve as a natural cross promotion for other steroid enhanced sports including professional football, track and field, the Tour De France and World Wrestling Entertainment.

The second room of the Steroid Wing would be for “use strongly suspected, but never proven” and have as its charter members Bonds and Sosa. Visitors to this room would receive a headset, courtesy of the Major League Players’ Union, where they could listen to ACLU lectures on the unreasonable search and seizure section of the 4th Amendment and the self-incrimination clause of the 5th Amendment.

The Gamblers’ Wing would finally allow Pete Rose and Joe Jackson to enter the Hall. The ideal destination for Vegas denizens and Wall Street stock traders, it would feature actual Pete Rose betting slips, a play-by-play analysis of the 1919 World Series, current odds on every Major League game, a Powerball Stand and an Off Track Betting Parlor.

Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle would be the highlighters of the Excessive Eating/Binge Drinking Wing. Of course, this Wing would house the Hall cafeteria, where throwing beer cups and peanut shells on the floor is encouraged. It would be sponsored by the Mayo Clinic Department of Surgery (specializing in Gastric Bypass and Liver Transplantation).

The Cheaters’ Wing would be primarily for pitchers like Gaylord Perry and Whitey Ford who won games by throwing spitballs and doctoring the baseball. Batters who corked bats would be eligible here also (Sammy Sosa being a dual entry but his plaque remains in the Steroid Wing). This Wing would feature periodic lectures on sports ethics by Michael Milken, Jeffrey Skilling and former IRS agents who specialize in helping people fill out their tax returns.

For completeness, the Hall would need a Straight Arrow Wing for those skilled but bland players with no obvious public vices and not much personality either. This Wing would feature Cal Ripken and Ryne Sandberg and would have a small theater showing a loop of the collected speeches of Commissioner Bud Selig and an ice cream stand that only sold vanilla.

Unfortunately, the only problem with an innovative 21st Century Hall of Fame is that being fan friendly, it could not feature one of the most popular players’ vices. A Marital Infidelity Wing just wouldn’t be possible. For one thing, the Wing wouldn’t be large enough to house all the eligible players. Also, any sponsors or any accompanying features might not be suitable for the family crowd baseball desperately tries to attract. To honor all the marital infidelity in baseball would require a special large, offsite X-rated pavilion. Some green shag carpeting from floor to ceiling would do nicely.

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