Sosa's Hall Of Fame Ballot Tally A Damning Indictment Of His Playing Career

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jan 9, 2013 10:45PM

Sammy Sosa won't need to go through one of his "rejuvenation" processes to get ready for Cooperstown enshrinement this year. (Image Credit: Comcast Sports Net's Chuck Garfein)

In case you missed it, not a single player on this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame ballot was elected for enshrinement Wednesday. It wasn’t a surprise: The presence of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa—the main faces of Major League Baseball’s Steroid Era—gave added speculation as to whether this year’s vote would either lead to one of them being enshrined or if Hall of Fame voters would choose to whitewash the part of the game’s history that brought Baseball back from the dead after the 1994 strike.

Obviously, voters opted for the latter.

Sosa should have some cause for alarm that he may wind up being dropped from the ballot in future years. The former Cubs slugger and Flintstones vitamins advocate received only 12.5 percent of the vote. Players who fail to receive five percent of the vote in a given year are dropped from the ballot. Sosa’s vote tally is as damning an indictment as any that Hall of Fame members believe his career numbers were largely assisted by PED usage; Clemens, who was named on 37.6 percent of ballots, and Bonds, named on 36.2 percent, were well on their way to Hall of Fame careers before they began putting up staggering numbers in the twilights of their respective careers.

The low percentage of ballots cast for Sosa is also a reminder of the inglorious end to his career. For a brief moment, he owned Chicago sports like no other athlete; only Michael Jordan could compare. He remains the only player in MLB history to have three 60-home run seasons, but the decline in Sosa’s performance after 2001 was quick and the dropoff in his numbers after 2002 is so drastic a blind man could recognize it.

Hall of Fame voters have been rushing to defend their rationale. Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander had a unique reasoning for why he voted to not endorse the Steroid Era players, which include A’s/Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire and one-time Cub Rafael Palmeiro.

”With or without my vote, the best players would get in. They always did.”

But Bonds and Clemens were among the best players of their era before they looked to modern medicine to prolong their dominance. No matter, says Telander.

”So I will not vote for Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa or Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds or Rafael Palmeiro. Not now. Not ever.

“They have Hall stats. But they were cheaters. Individuals. And I won’t have their stains on my hands. My children and their children will know where I stood. If, in time, I’m perceived as a fool, so be it.”

Here’s video of the Tribune’s Phil Hersh explaining how he voted.

ESPN Chicago's Jesse Rogers said the Baseball Writers Association of America got the vote right.

In the five years before his historic 66-home run season in 1998, Sosa averaged 34 homers a year. If he kept up that pace for the next seven seasons and adding his early home run totals, he would have totaled well over 450. Very impressive, but not necessarily Hall of Fame material. And that's assuming there would be no decline in his game. It's doubtful he would have averaged 34 home runs as he entered his mid-30s.

Then there's the flip side of the coin. Sun-Times sports editor Chris DeLuca, in a counterpoint to Telander's column, wrote that, when it comes to the Steroid Era, the media was just as complicit as the players and MLB owners and to become self-righteous about it now is bullshit.

"The Steroid Era was celebrated by the media, fans and owners, who kept dishing out outrageous salaries to reward the game’s biggest abusers. Attendance skyrocketed, and the paychecks from the TV networks kept adding zeros.

"But now we’re supposed to pretend that era didn’t happen. That the New York Yankees didn’t win three consecutive World Series (1998-2000) with a few suspected players on their roster. Or we’re supposed to decide that Craig Biggio was somehow clean, while Sammy Sosa was dirty. It’s ridiculous.

"You never hear this debate when it comes to NFL players and their Hall of Fame. Bob Costas doesn’t get teary-eyed when talking about protecting the integrity of a game that has a much deeper history with performance-enhancing drugs. Somehow, baseball deserves better?

"Henry Aaron admitted to taking amphetamines during his Hall of Fame career. He wasn’t alone. Does anyone really think Mickey Mantle’s numbers would’ve been as good had he not benefitted from performance-enhancing greenies — a drug with a cute name that is every bit as illegal as steroids?

Baseball writer Joe Sheehan didn't mince words about the voters.

60-odd percent of voters passing on Bonds and Clemens is a fuckload more idiotic groupthink than in the entire history of statheads.

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) January 9, 2013

The level of resentment among voters that they're not the oracles any longer is staggering.

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) January 9, 2013

DeLuca (who voted for Sosa) and Sheehan are right. The BBWAA can't ignore the Steroid Era anymore than they can Ty Cobb's virulent racism and sociopathic behavior and the segregation of the game until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. The Steroid Era, for better and worse, is an important period of the game and to simply wash one's hands of it it makes BBWAA members even more complicit for their parts in it.

History may be written by the winners, but it can't be ignored.

Next year will see a better chance of a player being elected. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Pedro Martinez, Frank Thomas and Randy Johnson will all make their debuts on the HOF ballot. Maybe they're no-brainers—and in the case of Maddux, he should be a first-ballot entry—but with this group of voters, we doubt it.