Baseball politics don’t pay off for Bonds, Clemens

Steroids era still casts a shadow over users

Were they running for office instead of hoping to be elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would have been runaway winners on Tuesday.

In fact, they would have been landslide victors.

But maybe that’s what separates politics from baseball. The qualifications for the baseball hall, complicated by the steroids era and the seemingly permanent stain of performance-enhancing drugs, are significantly higher than winning any political election — players need 75 per cent of baseball writers’ votes to be elected. And once again, for the 10th and final time on the writers’ ballot, Bonds and Clemens didn’t come close.

Bonds, one of the greatest players in baseball history, received 66 per cent of the votes, his highest total. Clemens, one of the greatest pitchers in history, received 65.2 per cent of the votes. They needed three out of every four votes.

They got more than two. Just not close enough to three.

Find three out of four people who can agree on just about anything, like where to eat dinner let alone who belongs in a Hall of Fame, and see how difficult that is. Now let the debate extend to what happened during baseball’s steroid era and how Big Papi, David Ortiz, became the first player with any hint of a drug issue to be elected to the hall, the only player to receive better than 75 per cent of the totals announced early Tuesday evening.

Ortiz’s name had been listed in the 409-page Mitchell Report on steroid use released in 2007. Apparently, he failed a 2003 drug test at a time when steroid use wasn’t banned in baseball. The voters elected him, anyhow.

In 2004, Ortiz left the Minnesota Twins, joined the Boston Red Sox and became one of the greatest — if not the greatest — designated hitters ever. His credentials, like those of Bonds, those of Clemens, those of Sammy Sosa, those of Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, are unquestioned. The fact he went from good player in Minnesota to all-time great time in Boston raises an eyebrow — just not enough of them.

For now, there will be a baseball hall without Pete Rose, the all-time hit leader; without Bonds, the all-time home run leader; without Clemens, the four-time Cy Young Award winner. A museum incomplete. And also without the controversial Curt Schilling, who talked his way out of the hall, dropping to 58.6 per cent from being just 16 votes shy of entrance a year ago.

Now Clemens, Bonds, Schilling, and Sosa, who never captured the imagination of voters even though he’s the only man to hit 60 home runs in three seasons in baseball history, drop from the writers’ ballot. If they are to make the hall, it will come from the new era committee, which consists of writers, former players, former managers and former executives.

But considering that the late Hall-of-famer Joe Morgan wrote a letter to voters years ago, saying “steroid users don’t belong here,” there’s no certainty the new era committee will be any more sympathetic to those of the performance-enhancing drugs era than the 400-plus baseball writers have been.

Ortiz is in with Hall-offame numbers. He has a .930 career on base plus slugging, with 541 home runs, 1,768 runs batted in, and an amazing on-base percentage of .380. His post-season stats were off the charts. The numbers are spectacular.

But so are Sosa’s. So are Gary Sheffield’s. So are the numbers of A-rod. Obviously, so are Bonds’ numbers, which are a level all their own. The numbers of Ramirez are Hall of Fame worthy also, just not the drug tests.

That is the incongruity of where baseball and the hall are, with neither the game nor the institution prepared to alter their voting rules.

Those who believe in Bonds and Clemens will always believe in them. Those who don’t have rarely altered their position. The majority of writers believe in Bonds and Clemens as Hall of Famers. A simple majority, though, isn’t good enough for the hall, which in a way makes baseball’s Hall the hardest to get into, and maybe the most respected.

I’ve written this before: Bonds was on the ballot for 10 years. I never voted for him. Despite his massive talents, I couldn’t.

In the first half of his career, he hit a home run just about every 15 at-bats. In the second half, he hit one every 7.5 at-bats. Those, as Bob Costas said Tuesday, were video-game numbers.

A proud Hall of Famer told me Tuesday that it wasn’t just what Bonds, Clemens or any of the steroid-era batters did — it was how they conducted themselves. They almost flaunted their superiority. They flexed their muscles and performed at a level never seen before. And when called out on it, they mostly lied about it.

Up next on the Hall of Fame list, Scott Rolen. This is the trouble the hall finds itself in. Rolen was a great baseball player. He wasn’t an all-time great. The hall ballot is full of great baseball players. The hall is for the greatest of the greats.

The greatest of the greats who didn’t cheat. Or in the case of Ortiz, had his name on a list that didn’t get treated as though it was real. He’s in. A first-ballot Hall-offamer at a time when those of first-ballot numbers, in a game all about numbers, watched the door close shut. Maybe forever.

WHEN CALLED OUT ON IT, THEY MOSTLY LIED ABOUT IT.