Before the release of the Mitchell report, seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens was a slam dunk for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now he’s in limbo, right alongside all-time home run king Barry Bonds.
Recent history tells us that the members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who vote for the Hall of Fame take a harsh view of alleged cheaters.
Mark McGwire is the prime example. He hit 583 career homers, including 70 in 1998, a record that stood until Bonds hit 73 in 2001. But McGwire was kept out of the Hall of Fame this year because of steroids suspicion. Many voters couldn’t get past McGwire’s poor performance at a 2005 congressional hearing on steroid use. Although he was under oath, the former St. Louis Cardinals and Oakland A’s slugger refused to say whether he took performance-enhancing drugs.
Now Clemens and other marquee players have had their reputations tainted by inclusion in the Mitchell report. Will Clemens’ 354 career victories and 4,672 career strikeouts reaquire an asterisk?
“I’m not sure about all these asterisks and all those things,” Minnesota Twins manager Rod Gardenhire said this month at baseball’s winter meetings. “It’s really hard to know when it helped a person and when it didn’t help a person.”
Commissioner Bud Selig, however, said naming names was necessary.
“If there were problems, I wanted them revealed,” Selig said. “If there were individuals who engaged in wrongdoing, I wanted those facts to come to light.”
Patrick Saunders: 303-954-1428 or psaunders@denverpost.com
