We’re almost done with this.
Since Mark McGwire debuted on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in 2007, voters have had to reckon with the context of MLB’s Steroid Era and thus far, have excluded some of the greatest players in the history of the game from Cooperstown.
And when Alex Rodriguez falls off the ballot after failing to get elected in 2031, there may never be another obvious ‘Hall of Famer’ denied due to their use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Rodriguez (fourth year) and Manny Ramirez (ninth) represent the two final would-be-slam-dunks, appropriate considering they were the only ones actually suspended for PEDs. The suspensions are explicitly a red line for some voters, who were simultaneously in favor of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens while opposing the candidacies of Rodriguez and Ramirez.
McGwire later admitted usage, while Bonds and Clemens were named in the Mitchell Report, all coming up short of the required 75% vote share in their stints on the ballot.
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Their potential inclusion was a topic of serious scholarly debate – particularly when Bonds, Clemens and Sammy Sosa debuted on the 2013 ballot. And by the time Rodriguez arrived in 2022, everybody was so beat down and resigned to their own corners that there’s no longer an effort to earnestly sway hearts and minds. Some (myself included) had bought into a prophecy that a demographic shift younger among Hall of Fame voters would get the MLB icons of our youth over the hump.
Some cases will pop up in the next few years of fringe Hall guys who got busted. But does anybody really feel strongly enough to shout in defense of Robinson Cano, Ryan Braun or Nelson Cruz?
No, it will be the end of an era when Rodriguez and Ramirez are gone from the ballot.
Wherever you land on PEDs and the Hall of Fame, it’s of the utmost importance to future generations that we don’t simply wave away the Steroid Era in a telling of baseball history. Passing down the appreciation of these generational players is more vital to baseball history than any plaque in Cooperstown.
Baseball Hall of Fame voting results
Alex Rodriguez
2022: 34.3%
2023: 35.7%
2024: 34.8%
Manny Ramirez
2017: 23.8%
2018: 22%
2019: 22.8%
2020: 28.2%
2021: 28.2%
2022: 28.9%
2023: 33.2%
2024: 32.5%
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