Baseball Hall of Fame 2017 ballot: Who’s in and who’s out?
The Steroid Guys
Even the most cynical baseball fan or reporter cannot tell you with a straight face that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are not two of the greatest baseball players in the history of the world. Did steroids turn Bonds into a freakish combination of plate discipline and power past the age of 40? Without a doubt. Would he have hit 600 home runs and stolen over 500 bases without steroids? Most would say yes. Same goes for Clemens. Not a seven-time Cy Young winner without steroids, but still one of the best pitchers in baseball history without them.
Drawing the line with these two is tough. The Hall of Fame has always held itself up for something more than a place to worship baseball players for their pure numbers. For that reason, Bonds and Clemens are not enshrined, even though the bulk of their steroid abuse came before the league had instituted a full-scale drug testing policy. Now, those semantics should not give them a free pass for using drugs that are illegal in the United States of America. It was wrong to use steroids regardless of the rules and everyone knew it.
Bonds and Clemens were still hovering below 50 percent in the 2016 vote, and might get another bump this year. At some point, everyone who is willing to accept them in the Hall has cast that vote, and the other side will not be convinced. Manny Ramirez, who failed two tests at the end of his career while also being named on the anonymous survey, gives the voters another tainted name to chew on. Ramirez might have an even harder time being inducted than Bonds and Clemens because his numbers are good, but not so good that steroid use can be overlooked.