Barry Bonds, baseball’s all-time steroid cheat and a blot on the record book, was once again decisively rejected for Hall of Fame membership, this time by a special Hall of Fame committee, the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, assembled for the purpose of reconsidering eminent but previously rejected candidates who are otherwise noteworthy for one reason or another. There were 16 members on the panel with a 75% (12 of 16) vote threshold needed for induction at Cooperstown. Bonds didn’t come close with only five, and neither did the other two tainted greats, Roger Clemens, whose own trainer testified under oath that he used banned PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs), and Gary Sheffield, who takes the bizarre stance that he did use PEDs once but didn’t understand what he was doing and besides, they didn’t help him anyway.
When I finally saw the composition of the committee I was pretty confident that Barry and Roger (above) as well as Gary were toast, because seven current Hall members were among the 16 participants and I doubted that any of them want to sully their own honor by admitting cheats. There were also non-cheating almost Hall-worthy players on the ballot, and only Jeff Kent, probably the least famous of the batch, received sufficient votes to be enshrined. Kent hit more homers than any other second baseman baseball history and the main obstacle to his election appears to have been an obnoxious personality; I have no problem with his election. Now the Three Cheats won’t have a shot at polluting Cooperstown at least until 2031, and under current rules, if they don’t get at least 5 votes then, they will be permanently ineligible.
Predictably, a lot of the commentary on the rejection of Bonds et al. has come from younger fans (who have dubious ethics) and consist almost entirely of rationalizations I have shot down on Ethics Alarms and elsewhere repeatedly. Many also have recycled the arguments I knew would become popular once the Hall admitted Red Sox DH David Ortiz. I would not be surprised if the progressive ethics rot underway in America reaches a level by 2031 that gets Bonds, Clemens and Sheffield into the Hall.
But for the time being, justice is done, integrity reigns, and all’s right with the world. I’ll take it.
It’s a good time for today’s Christmas song…
Ethics Alarms 
If the decision continues to be made by Hall of Fame members and not the sports writers, I think they will be kept out.
You would expect players in the hall would have a sense of integrity and fair play.
-Jut
This gives me some hope. If things continue to rumble the right direction, they’ll be out forever.
I can say that my wisdom grew fairly decently in 5-6 year increments, so maybe those younger fans will have grown up a bit more by then.
I feel fairly confident that had the madness not been stopped by Trump and a few other culture war participants, the nature of la la land ideals and societal pressures would’ve infected hall voters enough for The Cheats to get in. Maybe even voted in to a women’s sports HoF somewhere, too….
I think sanity and common sense are on the comeback trail, but there’s still a lot of baseball to play, to use an analogy….
I recall Roger Clemens denying ever taking any PEDs, and repeated testing throughout his career always proved negative. Yet, they take the word of his former trainer over all the negative test results. Something doesn’t add up.
He was not tested throughout his career: routine testing started only toward the end of his career. He also had, like Bonds, a sudden late career resurgence at an age when un-enhanced players typically start to decline. Nobody has ever shown any motive for the trainer to lie; Clemens had every reason not to admit that he had used PEDs. The case for Clemens cheating is not as beyond dispute as the case against Bonds, but that’s like saying the case against O.J. isn’t as strong as the case against Jack Ruby. Clemens was tried for perjury, and was acquitted because his pal and fellow Yankee pitcher who had said that he had heard Clemens admit taking Human Growth Hormone, went on the stand and surprised the prosecution by saying that it was “50-50” whether he had misunderstood Clemens to say that he had used Human Growth Hormone. He may have, he said, “misremembered.” Oh. He decided that after saying he was certain before the trial.
I had an earlier post this year that reviewed the Clemens case.
You said that routine testing started only towards the end of his career, the same time you said Clemens had a sudden late career resurgence. It seems Clemens late career resurgence coincided with the beginning of routine testing. Wouldn’t the testing he submitted to at that time reveal the use of PEDs?
Not at all, necessarily. Clemens’ PED of choice was HGH which was a popular PED because it is not detectable through urine testing like other steroids. Testing came in hard in 2003. His sudden resurgence was in 1997, when he was 35. He had already had one fake retirement before 2003.