SIMMONS: Another last chance for Bonds, Clemens and the Baseball Hall of Fame

The latest last chance for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and the Baseball Hall of Fame comes this Sunday.

This is the first time someone other than the regular Hall of Fame voters will have a say regarding baseball’s greatest players — looking back at the sport’s most confusing, confounding and disagreeable era.

There has been no agreement of any kind for years about what to do with those suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs and those, who in fact, have tested positive for them while playing Major League Baseball.

The Hall of Fame voters, forever in disagreement, have had their say. They spent 10 years determining what to do with Bonds, Clemens, and others with similar questions. And neither Bonds nor Clemens came close to the 75% threshold needed to be elected to the Hall.

Their time on the Hall of Fame ballot ran out a year ago. Bonds, the seven-time MVP, maybe the greatest player we’ve ever seen, ended up 36 votes shy of induction. Clemens, the seven-time Cy Young award winner, maybe the greatest pitcher we’ve ever seen, needed 39 votes. That was as close as they came in 10 years of possibilities.

And this time, for the first time with the Contemporary Baseball Era voters, they will be judged by many they played with or against, a jury mostly comprised of peers, which includes seven Hall of Fame players, five high-ranking baseball executives including Paul Beeston of Toronto, one owner and three longtime baseball writers.

There are 16 voters in all and it will take 12 votes to be elected. There are eight players on the ballot, including former Blue Jay Fred McGriff, who never received more than 39.8% of votes in his years of Hall of Fame eligibility. The others to be considered, Rafael Palmeiro, who has Hall of Fame statistics but a positive drug test late in his career; two-time MVP Dale Murphy; longtime Yankees’ great Don Mattingly; former Cleveland slugger, Albert Belle; audacious pitcher, Curt Schilling. And of course, Bonds and Clemens are the headline makers, either way.

If they get in, it’s a screaming headline of acceptance and it’s the same if they don’t get in. The Contemporary Era panel can elect as many as three of these eight candidates or as few as zero. It’s their call, their private debate, their sober second thought about some who may be deserving and some who are at or below the borderline for induction.

The positive tests don’t exist for Bonds and Clemens, only the physical evidence, the eye test, and the reported evidence is damning regarding their career accomplishments. Unlike Palmeiro, who got caught and later talked about it at length, Bonds and Clemens have never admitted to anything. What they accomplished late in their careers – Clemens had a 1.87 earned run average at the age of 42 after winning a Cy Young at 41; Bonds won four MVPs at 36, 37, 38, and 39 and three years later had 132 RBI in his final big league season, seems as impossible today as it did then.

The players voting and maybe, more importantly, discussing the matter privately, are all well known. Ryne Sandberg. Greg Maddux. Jack Morris. Chipper Jones. Frank Thomas. Lee Smith. Alan Trammell. They come from a variety of backgrounds: Thomas and Maddux were sure-thing Hall of Famers. Morris needed years before he got enough votes to be selected. It’s three pitchers in Maddux, Morris, and Smith A first baseman in Thomas, Sandberg played second base, Trammell at shortstop, and Jones at third base.

Even the background of the executives has new-school Theo Epstein and old-school Beeston and we’re not sure where Angels owner Arte Moreno fits into the equation.

They will debate in private what those of us fortunate enough to be voters over the years have been debating internally for years. What to do with Bonds? What to do with Clemens? And how do you have a Hall of Fame already without Pete Rose, the all-time hit leader, and still without the home run king, Bonds, and master pitcher, Clemens?

It’s less or more complicated with Schilling, depending on your personal perspective. I thought he should have been voted in during his 10 years of eligibility. He has Hall of Fame credentials as a pitcher. He may not have Hall of Fame credentials as a human being. Where does this committee come down on despicable?

Schilling came within 63 votes of election in his final time eligible for Cooperstown – and that was after he asked to have his name removed from the ballot and the Hall would not accommodate him.

The obvious Hall of Famers here, if you remove the stench and statistical alterations, are Bonds and Clemens. Right after that, Schilling and Palmeiro.

Three of whom are attached to the steroid era.

And after that, there’s a chance for McGriff, a chance for Belle, and a longer shot for Mattingly and Murphy. But there’s no real handicapping what will be done here. Lee Smith, who didn’t get elected by the writers, got in through the New Era committee. So was Harold Baines a few years back and no one saw that coming.

Now come fresh voices on Bonds and Clemens and performance-enhancing drugs, and baseball’s most complicated time. This is the first of their last shots for election. The first, until there’s a next time.

ssimmons@postmedia.com
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