While more than half of voters have revealed their ballots publicly, 193 have not, and the breakdown of public vs. private with regard to Bonds and Clemens tells quite the story.

A decision not to vote for these guys is a decision to deny them that one high honor -- not to pretend none of this ever happened.". Every year he’s excluded due to allegations of steroid use, which still haunt him over a decade after he retired.

We're also 15 years post-BALCO, a dozen years separated from the Mitchell report and neither Bonds nor Clemens has come clean publicly about their alleged use. Complete coverage ». That's 83 percent. Some are general sports columnists. The career .298 hitter batted in 1,966 runs, hit the ball 2,935 times, and posted 601 doubles and 77 triples. That's 15 of 18. And in the end, it will be the undoing of Bonds and Clemens' candidacies, at least for the foreseeable future. Whatever one's perspective, it is almost assuredly a sign of failing candidacies. "Their use of chemicals to inflate body and performance was so far beyond circumstantial that it remains impossible to ignore," wrote Newhan, whose son, David, was an eight-year major leaguer. Bonds was connected to BALCO, the lab supplying several big-name players with performance-enhancing drugs. On the contrary, it humanizes it, illustrating that baseball is a sport with complicated people who make selfish decisions.

This won’t be enough to enter the Hall of Fame unless something changes.

"No effort is being made to ignore or forget that these guys played just because they cheated," wrote Dan Graziano, now an ESPN football writer, in an email. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were both allegedly using steroids when they raced for the single-season home-run record that Bonds eventually captured from McGwire. Bonds and Clemens, two of the all-time greats barely saw a spike in Hall of Fame voting in their eighth year on the ballot.


", Where Shaughnessy differs from the vast majority of the respondents was in his willingness to consider voting for Bonds and Clemens going forward.

Conviction, intransigence, whatever you want to call it, will make sure of that.

A number said they stumble when considering Rule 5 of the Hall's voting standards, the so-called character clause. Getting tougher. "Every year I stop at the sentence that includes 'integrity, sportsmanship [and] character' and my decision on Bonds and Clemens and other players, Sammy Sosa being another, is made for me," Steve Simmons, a longtime columnist, wrote in an email. No, I think they took those Hall of Fame-worthy performances and cheapened them to such an extent it is impossible to ignore and was totally unnecessary.". Barry Bonds, down to the final three outs of his candidacy on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, struck out again on Tuesday. That's what makes this so difficult -- I can't include either of them on a list in which integrity, sportsmanship and character are part of the process. Enough quarrel with that argument to make almost certain it doesn't happen.
Bonds’s percentage increases over the past three years, starting in 2018: 2.6%, 2.7%, 1.6%. -- did not offer any particularly realistic scenarios likely to unfold in the next three years. It is in that way, and so many others, a mirror for life, and recognizing Bonds and Clemens for their incredible achievements on the field would not cheapen those of their contemporaries in the Hall but remind that it is a sanctum for the best and only the best. It purportedly began in 1998 under new trainer Greg Anderson. Bonds received 59.1 percent of the vote and Clemens 59.5 percent, both jumps of less than 3 percentage points. "Do I feel badly about this given their Hall of Fame-worthy performances before what we call the steroid era? The reigning Home Run King spends every January hoping his name will be called as a new inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame. All Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have left is maybe. I do think as much as the story of baseball is told in other parts of the museum, those might as well be its phalanges. Maybe someday the Hall stops seeing Bonds and Clemens as the latter-day Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, two players whose performance clearly warrants induction and whose misdeeds prevent it from happening.