Yes, 30% more people voted for them now than at the start, but some of that is do to a culling and refresh of the voter list - new voters being younger more likely to vote for Clemens & Bonds than the olds. But in reality both quickly got above 50% on their third ballot and then just hit a ceiling. It was basically decided a long time ago the museum of baseball (and yes, that is effectively what the HoF is) would not include Bonds and Clemens.
Forget the hypocrisy that there are very likely steroid users (and for sure amphetamine users) already in the hall, but we are deep enough into the era that David Ortiz, who is credibly connected to steroids, got in and Alex Rodriguez on his first year got more than Bonds or Clemens did on theirs. This issue is sadly not going away.
I don't feel for Bonds or Clemens - I'm sure they'll live. What I feel for is the large proportion of rational baseball fans who don't care about making morality judgements and just want Cooperstown to, you know, honor the history of baseball. We can't just pretend that this 20 year period where we abritrarily decided was the start of the steroid era (steroid use of course is documented back into the 70s) didn't happen. And we definitely can't when we've inducted managers who benefitted by managing steroid users (Joe Torre, and more starkly Tony LaRussa - who bristled when a reporter dared to ask Mark McGwire why he was using andro). And for sure we can't when fucking Bud Selig is in the Hall of Fame - the same man who led baseball to turning a blind eye when steroid-induced home run chases saved baseball.
The hypocrisy of this whole era and putting it on the feet of Bonds and Clemens (and seemingly A-Rod) is just maddening. Who is it helping. They should have just put them in and put a note on the plaque saying they were highly suspected (or in A-Rod's case, suspended for) of steroid use. That was such a senisble workaround but instead we got this grandstanding.
It was grandstanding from Joe Morgan writing a scathing, ridiculous open letter about how sanctified the Hall of Fame is and why Bonds and Clemens have no right to be there - despite of course the many outright racists and greenie users and mysoginists are already in. It was grandstanding from a decades worth of sportswriters that turned this into a farce, submitting blank ballots or even worse ballots with like one or two people checked off who weren't even all that good.
And the Hall of Fame itself isn't absolved of blame here. They notably changed the rules to go from a 15-year eligibility limit to 10-year, which has massive effects as by year 15, enough of the voting roll would've changed to likely get Bonds and Clemens elected.
At some point fairly soon, some father or mother taking their son and/or daughter to a trip through Cooperstown will get asked by said kid "Who hit the most home runs?" or some such and willl have to go through some hilarious gymnastics on why the answer to that question is not in the Hall of Fame (of course the baseball he hit that broke Aaron's record or other records of Barry's very much are...).
In the end, the Hall of Fame only makes itself look stupid, and frankly baseball does this to itself. Not because steroids weren't a problem. They were, and the game cleaned itself up, but it isn't like the game wasn't fully supportive of that problem at the time. It is an era of the game, like the dead-ball era, or the post-Jackie era, or the modern three-true outcome era. It is stupid to just rip out an era of history like they've done.
I will never understand the strategy here to exclude two of the greatest players, two players that everyone admits were hall of famers before the years we all believe they started using steroids (around 97 for Clemens, 99 for Bonds). We'll get to the point where an inducted player admits that they took steroids, and we'll all realize, hopefully no more than the sportswriters that brought this on themselves, on how stupid it all was.
