Steroid-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa were denied entry to baseball’s Hall of Fame, with voters failing to elect any candidates for only the second time in four decades.
Bonds received just 36.2 percent of the vote, Clemens 37.6 and Sosa 12.5 in totals announced Wednesday by the Hall and the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. They were appearing on the ballot for the first time and have up to 14 more years to make it to Cooperstown.
Craig Biggio, 20th on the career list with 3,060 hits, topped the 37 candidates with 68.2 percent of the 569 ballots, 39 shy of the 75 percent needed. Among other first-year eligibles, Mike Piazza received 57.8 percent and Curt Schilling 38.8.
“I think as a player, a group, this is one of the first times that we’ve been publicly called out,” Schilling said. “I think it’s fitting. … If there was ever a ballot and a year to make a statement about what we didn’t do as players — which is we didn’t actively push to get the game clean — this is it.”
Jack Morris led holdovers with 67.7 percent. He will make his final ballot appearance next year, when fellow pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine along with slugger Frank Thomas are eligible for the first time.
It was just the eighth time the BBWAA failed to elect any players. There were four fewer votes than last year, and five members submitted blank ballots.
I’ve run out of ways to express my loathing for the Hall of Fame voters, who to my mind are as contemptible as a room full of Rick Perrys. I had to stop the embedded video on that ESPN link because I was about to start yelling obscenities at Pedro Gomez and Harold Bryant. At least Tim Kurkjian was making some sense, as do Jayson Stark, David Schoenfeld, and Joe Posnanski. But hey, it’s not all negative. Despite the BBWAA’s epic fail, there will be inductions this year, as Deacon White, Jacob Ruppert, and Hank O’Day will all be enshrined. If you have any idea who even two of these fellows are, go to the head of the class. If this isn’t a clarion call for a complete John Byrne does “Superman”-style reboot of the whole process, I don’t know what would be. Linkmeister has more.