No HoF entries but is it only a matter of time?

The Baseball Writers Association of America threw a shutout last night and as a result none of the candidates on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot surpassed the 75% threshold needed to gain entry into Cooperstown.

The two biggest names were Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds and neither of these key figures during the steroid era received more than a third of the writers’ vote. What does this say for baseball? Well, we have been here before in terms of a shutout. 1996 was the last time it happened and normalcy returned pretty quickly, and that year’s ballot actually included six eventual Hall of Famers.

Holdover candidates like Craig Biggio and Jack Morris who are slowly but surely advancing to the 75% mark – both are at 68% – will surely be elected soon and the same question has to be asked of Clemens and Bonds.

This is the eighth time in baseball history that the Hall has been blanked but unlike the defences of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire who juiced up, got big and hit a lot of home runs in the summer of 1998, Bonds and Clemens were the best players of their generation.

Surely, surely the Hall can’t keep them out forever because without these two we wouldn’t accurately be telling the history of the game. Don’t they have to go in? Before the steroid era began, Bonds was dominating in Pittsburgh, then San Francisco and also in left field. He was a powerful, dominant hitter who was feared by pitchers throughout the league. Clemens was the number one draft pick and before being dubbed ‘old and past it’ by then Red Sox GM Dan Duqette, he was baseballs finest hurler, picking up multiple Cy Young awards.

People who don’t support this theory and hold the ideal that they will never vote for cheaters has to be respected. The above two tainted the reputation of the game and even though they knew what they were doing was wrong and not in line with the underlying rules of baseball, they did it anyway, changed records and have unwittingly created this Hall of Fame debate.

Should the Hall be for players who have never gone against the rules in their career? Gaylord Perry, who pitched in the majors between 1962 and 1983, was voted into the Hall in 1991 despite his use of the spitball – an illegal pitch in which in which the ball has been altered by saliva, petroleum jelly or some other foreign substance – and Ty Cobb has his name in history despite often being painted a racist because of his well-documented fights with African-Americans.

Have the voters forgotten about these individuals? Was ‘everyone being racist’ as they now say ‘everybody was using steroids’. And what about guys who are speculated to have taken steroids? Mike Piazza for instance? There are too many obstacles and fine lines for voters to ponder about, and it can and does get in the way of voting for genuine baseball performance.

I’m not condoning steroids, because I know like everyone else that Bonds, Clemens and a whole lot more took performance-enhancing steroids during their careers. But as I have said, while some were average players who miraculously hit 40 extra home runs the season after or expanded their bicep size tenfold, Bonds and Clemens were baseball geniuses and athletic powerhouses before they juiced.

That’s exactly why their numbers were off the scale when they did cheat, because their stats beforehand were pretty darn good and no one could say at that point that they weren’t Hall of Fame bound.

Of course some voters ‘deferred’ their votes this year so the status of many players will now come down to how they view it in the years to come. Next year could be one of the biggest inductions in history with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas eligible, while the aforementioned Biggio and Morris could easily join them.

Behind the Class of ’14, which also includes Jeff Kent and Mike Mussina, come Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Ken Griffey Jr., Trevor Hoffman, Vlad Guerrero and others, while holdovers such as Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling and Tim Raines figure to continue to climb toward 75 percent. This year’s vote doesn’t mean anything, and whether it’s five, 10 or 15 years before the rejected guys make it in, or whether they make it in at all, the debate will go on.