Sure, Bonds and Clemens still have their advocates. But after 20 years, that argument has not only cooled off, it’s gone stale and mealy in the fridge. PED discourse-with Bonds at its center-dominated baseball circles from the time Ortiz was with the Minnesota Twins in the early 2000s. Even as the infamous duo shuffled closer than ever to enshrinement, the war of words changed from pervasive to perfunctory. But it resolves that conflict’s most ferocious chapter. Having Bonds and Clemens off the ballot won’t exactly end the baseball world’s moral panic around performance-enhancing drugs. Every winter since, voters, writers, analysts, and fans have picked over their cases as a rite of seasonal passage-to the point that Bonds, Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez are now the only three eligible players out of 31 with at least 100 career wins above replacement to not be in the Hall. The Uniquely Confounding Career of Curt Schillingīy the time they hit the Hall of Fame ballot in 2013, PED hysteria was at a peak, and even though the likes of Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro had felt the wrath of voters already, the appearances of the two most notorious perpetrators on the ballot refocused public ire. By December 2007, they were the headline names in the Mitchell Report neither appeared in an MLB game thereafter. It was performances like these-from players who, despite their achievements, were never truly beloved in the first place and therefore made easy villains-that turned steroids in baseball from an open secret to something that felt artificial. Clemens won four Cy Young awards after turning 35, and posted a 1.87 ERA for the Astros at age 42. Bonds took the single-season and career home run records, and hit. Both were already in the midst of Hall of Fame–caliber careers when, around the turn of the century, they suddenly became better than ever. Together, the two made the perfect test cases for PED discourse in baseball. Bonds, with 260 votes, and Clemens, with 257, fell agonizingly short of the 296 necessary to meet the Hall of Fame’s 75 percent threshold. But Tuesday, when the results of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) balloting were announced, his election was of secondary importance.īarry Bonds and Roger Clemens, arguably the most accomplished hitter and pitcher in MLB history, respectively, have fallen short of election on their final attempts.
Ortiz is usually the center of attention wherever he goes, and six months from now, he’ll stand under a marquee in upstate New York and receive the greatest adulation of his life. While Jeter was a Yankees lifer who made understated competence into a global brand, Ortiz was a cast-off who found new life in Boston’s colors, the most avuncular star ballplayer of the 21st century. In many respects, he is Boston’s Derek Jeter.
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