For only the eighth time in history the Baseball Writers’ Association of America has voted and not one of the 37 candidates eligible for election received the necessary 75% of the ballots for entry into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Ohio. Not since 1996 has the BBWAA failed to elect even one former baseball star player into those hallowed halls.
The results were announced live on MLB Network on Wednesday Jan 9th evening to the surprise of fans and bookies alike. There has been much speculation in the press of late about the candidacy of former MLB heroes Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens because of their alleged involvement with PED’s or Performance Enhancing Drugs. In fact, the first that most of us ever heard about PED’s etc were when the Bonds and Clemens scandals broke out. Regardless of the blogs and the public opinion polls, neither Bonds nor Clemens received even half the votes necessary to get to Cooperstown. Bonds got 36.2% and Clemens got 37.6%.
In his first year on the ballot, Craig Biggio came closest to the required 75% of the votes with 68.2% of the ballots leaving him just 39 votes short. In his 14th time on the ballot, Jack Morris received 67.7%…..he only gets one more shot at it since the maximum number of years on the ballot is 15. Jeff Bagwell came in with 59.6% and Mike Piazza with 57.8%. Slugger Sammy Sosa, in his first year on the ballot, only received 12.5% of the vote, but, like I say, it was only his first year.
This year’s election only worsens the already ugly “ballot bottleneck” that so much has been written about in previous years. The candidates are piling up. I realize that the actual facility there in Cooperstown is not really all that big, but, there are players on that list that really deserve to be in there with Hank Aaron and all of the rest of the greats.
Also worth considering are the active players who, if they retired tomorrow, would be automatic “shoe ins” to make it to the Hall of Fame. Consider guys like Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, Mariano Rivera, Ichiro Suzuki and Jim Thome. No one can deny that these great players will be on that ballot one day soon.
