Bonds falls short again — will voters eventually listen to Mays?
For the ninth consecutive year, Barry Bonds did not receive the necessary votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America required to be elected to the Hall of Fame.
Support for Major League Baseball’s alltime home run leader continues to increase on an annual basis, but the 61.8% of votes Bonds received on the 2021 ballot still left him well short of the 75% needed to be enshrined in Cooperstown.
For the first time since 2013, when Bonds first appeared on the ballot, no players were elected to the Hall of Fame during Tuesday’s ballot reveal. Pitchers Curt Schilling (71.1%) and Roger Clemens (61.6%) joined Bonds in receiving support from more than 50% of the roughly 400 BBWA A voters, but Bonds and Clemens’ ties to performanceenhancing drugs and Schilling’s controversial social media posts have caused a significant portion of voters to leave their names unchecked on ballots.
The 2022 Hall of Fame ballot will mark the 10th and final year Bonds, Clemens and Schilling are all eligible to be voted
in by the BBWAA, but Schilling took to social media immediately following Tuesday’s announcement to request his name be removed from consideration.
“I’m now somehow in a conversation with two men who cheated, and instead of being accountable they chose to destroy others lives to protect their lie,” Schilling wrote in a lengthy Facebook post.
The pitcher added that he no longer wishes to have writers determine his Hall of Fame fate but is open to be considered for enshrinement by a Veterans Committee.
“I will not participate in the final year of voting,” Schilling said. “I am requesting to be removed from the ballot. I’ll defer to the Veterans Committee and men whose opinions actually matter and who are in a position to actually judge a player. I don’t think I’m a Hall of Famer as I’ve often stated but if former players think I am then I’ll accept that with honor.”
Many recent candidates including Larry Walker have enjoyed a late groundswell of support from voters in their last year, but it’s unclear if voters who have strong beliefs about suspected PED usage will have a change of heart that leads to a surprise election for Bonds.
Four other former San Francisco Giants players joined Bonds on the ballot as shortstop Omar Vizquel (49.1%), second baseman Jeff Kent (32.4%), Tim Hudson (5.2%) and Barry Zito (one vote) received at least one vote, but Vizquel appears to be the only one with a realistic chance of being voted into the Hall of Fame in the near future. The 24-year veteran and 11-time Gold Glove Award winner has enjoyed considerable momentum behind his candidacy in recent years, but allegations of domestic violence against Vizquel have forced some voters to reconsider their opinions.
What’s abundantly clear from the 2021 Hall of Fame voting results and public ballot reveals that have taken place in recent weeks is that there’s no consensus on how writers should interpret a fairly vague voting stipulation that says, “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”
For many voters, it’s easy to overlook Bonds and Clemens’ ties to performance-enhancing drugs because they played during an era when commissioner Bud Selig, a member of the Hall of Fame, failed to address steroid issues that had overrun the game. Many team owners and general managers knew players were using performance-enhancing drugs and it’s suspected that some players who were never publicly linked to PEDs did indeed benefit from them.
For others, it’s difficult to sign off on supporting players such as Bonds, Clemens, Schilling and Vizquel because they do not feel the players lived up to the standards required for enshrinement in Cooperstown.
Even former players who have been elected to the Hall of Fame are split on supporting the candidacy of certain players. Joe Morgan wrote a letter to every BBWAA voter in 2017 asking to keep steroid users out of Cooperstown, but one of the greatest players in the sport’s history, Willie Mays, said he wants Bonds “to have that honor.”
“On behalf of all the people in San Francisco, and all over the country, vote this guy in,” Mays said in August 2018.
Mays’ plea could gain traction again in 2022 during the seven-time MVP’s final turn on the ballot. In a year when Alex Rodríguez and David Ortiz will debut on the ballot and voters will once again face moral dilemmas, another appeal from Mays, the oldest living Hall of Famer, could make an impact.