Posted on 01/09/2013 11:12:23 AM PST by massmike
Baseball writers didn't elect Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens into the Hall of Fame on Wednesday, making an apparent statement on their suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs.
In fact, they failed to elect anyone, something that has only happened twice in the Hall's history.
Since 1965, the only years the writers didn't elect a candidate were when Yogi Berra topped the 1971 vote by appearing on 67 percent of the ballots cast and when Phil Niekro headed the 1996 ballot at 68 percent. Both were chosen the following years when they achieved the 75 percent necessary for election.
Also on the ballot for the first time were Sammy Sosa and Mike Piazza, power hitters whose statistics have been questioned because of the Steroids Era, and Craig Biggio, 20th on the career list with 3,060 hits — all for the Houston Astros. Curt Schilling, 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in postseason play, was another ballot rookie.
Several holdovers from last year also were on the 37-player ballot, including Jack Morris (67 percent), Jeff Bagwell (56 percent), Lee Smith (51 percent) and Tim Raines (49 percent).
In advance of Wednesday's announcement, The Baseball Think Factory website compiled votes by writers who made their opinions public and with 159 ballots had everyone falling short of admission. Biggio was at 69 percent, followed by Morris (63), Bagwell (61), Raines (61), Piazza (60), Bonds (43) and Clemens (43).
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcsports.msnbc.com ...
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens shouldn’t worry too much, though. I’m sure their accomplishments will be properly memorialized in nearby dark alleys.
If they let ANY of the Steroids gang in then Rose deserves to be in the HOF. He only bet on himself to win.
If Bonds hadn't been doping and caught lying about it, he be in the HoF, but now his chances of getting there are the same as Pete Rose's. Good. "Cheaters Never Prosper." I'd like to see Sosa barred as well for using corked bats.
Bonds and Clemens should get 100% of the first-ballot vote from any objective observers. Both had Hall-of-Fame career numbers before steroid use ever became part of the game. But sportswriters are legendary for their desire to serve as moral police...look how Keith Olbermann turned out. :)
Not a good thing when you are a manager....sometimes it's better to lose a game in the long run, for example abusing a pitcher, or using your closer 7 days in row, just because you have money riding on the game.
+1
"...The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh...people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”
Mike Piazza is the greatest right handed hitting catcher of all time and he gets left off 43% of the ballots? There has never been one allegation against him regarding steroid use. Lot’s of “rumors” but NO ALLEGATIONS! I guess he’s guilty of being really good while others were cheating?
Rose would never lie.
Multiple wrongs don’t make a right.
+1 to that. And I was rooting for the Braves in that game.
tune of Rice a Roni Jingle:
Bonds, the phony
The San Francisco cheat!
Kind of silly. Even if steroids never exited Bonds and Clemens would still have been two of the top 25 greatest players of all time. And the Hall is packed with players who were juiced on amphetamines for years. They’ll get in eventually, as they should. Pete Rose should too, btw, and it is an obscenity to the game that he isn’t already.
I really hate self righteous sport writers. In the sports media when it comes PED’s you are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
Other people cheated, so Bonds & Clemons get passes? OJ Simpson got away with murdering two people, so that means it should be 100% OK if I murder people too? Is that what you think?
I agree about the Killer B era.
Biggio is very community minded. His work with the Sunshine Kids (kids with cancer) has gone on for decades.
The thing I always liked about Biggio when he played was that he was an “all out” player. He NEVER trotted to first base. He always ran full-throttle. When he came to the ballpark it was to play, not just to collect a paycheck. When he left the field after a game his uniform was always the dirtiest.
Maybe Piazza should get in, I don’t enough about him. But the obvious cheaters should be kept out.
From my understanding, Bonds deserves to be in the Hall of Fame based on his pre-1999 record.
Everything I’ve heard indicates that Bonds did not start “bulking up” until 1999. I could be wrong, of course.
Bonds’ record through 1998 is truly great and easily HOF worthy. You could cut him off after 1995 and he would still be HOF worthy.
famed moment in Yanks-Mets series (’oo?); Clemens pitch, Piazza breaks bat; Clemens throws part of bat at him.
“I thought it was the ball.”
>>The last time they had met, in July of 2000, only three months earlier, Clemens buried a fastball into Piazza’s skull. Everyone in the Mets’ organization and their fans were fuming. Everyone on the other side of this equation was stunned ... and a bit worried about the form of retaliation ... and when it would arrive....He swings and boom! — the bat explodes into three pieces. The handle stays in Piazza’s hands. The middle of the bat flies into foul territory off the first-base side. The barrel, the biggest part of the jagged bat, bounces to the left side of the infield, between the mound and first base.
Clemens rushes in to field what he thinks is the ball. At least that’s what he says later. Then, to the astonishment of millions of people, once he realizes it’s a piece of a bat, and not the ball, Clemens angrily flings the bat toward foul territory on the first-base side — right in the path of Piazza, who is running toward first. Piazza is stunned, confused and a little disoriented because of all the flying bat pieces, yet he is certain Clemens is throwing the bat purposely at him. A stunned Piazza begins walking toward Clemens with a perplexed expression. “What’s your problem?” Piazza yells.
The moment becomes highly intense as the space between the two players rapidly closes. But Clemens, refusing to acknowledge Piazza, walks toward home plate, telling umpire Charlie Reliford, “Give me a ball.” Meanwhile, as both dugouts empty, Reliford stands between the players, keeping order out of the potential chaos. Piazza, maintaining his composure under the most bizarre of inflammable situations, returns to home plate and Clemens returns to the mound.
On the next pitch, Piazza grounds out to second, and Clemens races off the mound, into the dugout, up the runway and into the clubhouse. His emotions were running so high that he had to find a way to calm himself down.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/espn25/story?page=moments/95
And Ty Cobb was a son of a bitch. So what? This isn't the Boy Scouts.
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