Retired baseball player Barry Bonds may have missed his chance at entering Baseball's Hall of Fame. For the first time in nearly two decades, voters at the Baseball Hall of Fame failed to nominate one living entry for the 2013 ceremony.
The New York Times writes that this result may be the voters' way of voicing their disdain with the game's widespread steroid problem, which sullied the legacies of both Bonds and fellow candidate Roger Clemens.
In perhaps the most resounding referendum on the legacy of steroids in baseball, voters for the Hall of Fame rejected the candidacy of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in voting announced Wednesday. For the first time since 1996, and the eighth time over all, no players received the necessary 75 percent of the votes from baseball writers.
Bonds won a record seven Most Valuable Player awards while setting the career and single-season records for home runs, and Clemens won a record seven Cy Young Awards, and an M.V.P., while surpassing 300 victories and 4,000 strikeouts. But both players were strongly tied to steroid use and received well short of the necessary votes for election.
The Hall of Fame will induct three new members in Cooperstown, N.Y., this summer — the umpire Hank O'Day, the owner Jacob Ruppert and a catcher, Deacon White. All three died in the 1930s and were voted in by the veterans committee in December. As a result, baseball will hold its annual Hall of Fame ceremony next July in an awkward context — without a single living honoree on stage.
The highest vote this time around went to Craig Biggio, who received 388 votes and was named on 68.2 percent of the ballots cast. Biggio, a former Houston Astro who ended his career with 3,060 hits, fell 39 votes short of election. Bonds, meanwhile, was named on 36.2 percent of the ballots and Clemens on 37.6 percent.
Read more at the New York Times.