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David Lennon

David Ortiz, on his very first try, was elected Tuesday night into the Baseball Hall of Fame. 
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, appearing for the 10th and final time on the BBWAA ballot, were shut out again. 
The affable Big Papi also did something neither of those other two managed during their Cooperstown-worthy careers: Be outed on an MLB survey list as testing positive for a PED. 
That last part doesn’t matter all that much to me. I voted for Ortiz and believe him to be a deserving Hall of Famer. That 2003 survey was supposed to be anonymous, before MLB entered the penalty phase of the sport’s shiny new PED program, yet somebody leaked Big Papi’s name anyway. 
It hasn’t been publicly revealed why Ortiz flunked the test and even commissioner Rob Manfred has attempted to discredit the whole matter, issuing what amounts to a presidential pardon for one of baseball’s most charismatic stars. 
"We had someone coming out with this one list that you don’t know what anybody tested positive for," Ortiz said Tuesday night on a Zoom call with the media. "All of a sudden, he was pointing a finger at me. But then we start being tested and I never failed a test. What does that tell you?" 
Very little, actually. Except for maybe this one thing: Penalizing Hall of Fame candidates for PEDs has become comically selective, and in the cases of Bonds and Clemens, hilariously so. Both were allowed to stack their trophy cases, all the while unimpeded by MLB. 
Bonds became the most feared hitter in baseball history, finishing as the home run king with 762 bombs and seven MVP awards. Clemens collected seven Cy Youngs as well as an MVP, and is third all-time with 4,672 strikeouts. In the final BBWAA count, here’s what those resumes were worth: Bonds wound up with 66% of this year’s vote, well short of the 75% threshold, and Clemens earned 65.2%. 
It took them both a full decade just to climb into the 60s. Ortiz got to 77.9% on the first ballot. He’s no Mariano Rivera (unanimous in first year) or Derek Jeter (all but one of the 397 votes). But Papi still didn’t have to endure some ceremonial slap on the wrist for that PED thing and be forced to wait a few more years. (Mike Piazza, dogged by his own nebulous steroid suspicions, wasn’t elected until his fourth try.) 
You could say that the BBWAA was starting to warm up to Bonds and Clemens. After all, they did get two-thirds of the vote, and if the Hall of Fame hadn’t unilaterally shortened the eligibility term from 15 years to 10 back in 2014 — a move no doubt executed with PED scofflaws in mind — maybe Bonds and Clemens eventually grind their way to Cooperstown. 
Instead, the Hall got what it wanted, by proxy of the BBWAA passing judgment on two of the game’s immortal talents, an embarrassing slight for a museum meant to chronicle the history of the sport. But don’t take our word for it. Listen to a newly minted Hall of Famer, who got the question everybody was thinking only minutes after receiving the phone call himself. 
Shouldn’t Barry and Rocket be sharing the stage with you in July? 
"Barry Bonds separated himself from the game at the highest level," said Ortiz, going as far as to describe him as an idol. "I know that there’s a lot of things going on, but to me, the guy’s a Hall of Famer, way before everything, all the talk. Same thing for Rocket. 
"When I see these guys, to be honest with you, I don’t even compare myself to them. Not having them join me at this time is something that’s hard for me to believe because those guys, they did it all." 
Despite the voting process being turned into a social-media Thunderdome every winter, the BBWAA traditionally gets it right. When the dust clears, the worthy candidates are ticketed for Cooperstown, and we all move on to the next steel cage match on Twitter. 
But a Hall of Fame without Bonds and Clemens isn’t right. It’s ridiculous. And don’t hold your breath for any corrections from the upcoming special committees. The Hall gets to pick the former players, executives, coaches and media on those 16-member panels. I’m not expecting many Bonds and Clemens allies in those groups — like Harold Baines got — if they’re even made eligible come December. I’d also anticipate those committees to be much harsher on those two than the BBWAA, whose PED hard-liners will be losing ground to younger voters in coming years. 
"My family and I put the Hall of Fame in the rearview mirror 10 years ago," Clemens said in a statement Tuesday night. "I didn’t play baseball to get into the Hall of Fame." 
But Clemens played it at an elite level for more than two decades, just like Bonds did. Everyone knows that. And the Hall is worse off for not recognizing it.

Columnists

SPDAVE220126

Keeping Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out of Hall of Fame is wrong

Keeping Bonds, Clemens out of Hall of Fame is wrong

Hall of Fame Steroids Baseball

Turns out, it was a short stay on Mount Olympus. 
Three years and three ballots ago, I made the decision to<a href="https://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/david-lennon/harold-baines-hall-of-fame-david-lennon-ballot-1.24610024"> scale back my Hall of Fame votes</a> to a more select group — the no-brainers, so to speak — rather than work the margins to come up with the maximum 10 candidates permitted by the rules. 
The philosophical shift on my part came about after the Class of 2019 election of Harold Baines by the Today’s Game Era Committee, a 16-member panel that is one of a handful designed to reconsider candidates the BBWAA previously had dismissed. No offense to Baines, a very good player, but I felt the controversial pick — engineered by his lobbying friends on the committee — only served to weaken the Cooperstown brand as a whole. 
Spurred some by the Baines imbroglio, I <a href="https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/2019-baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-by-newsday-s-david-lennon-1.24546611">shrunk my ballot</a> to the players I thought were the three slam-dunk Mount Olympus candidates: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera. The gap that followed was significant, in my view. 
I also felt comfortable sticking with Bonds and Clemens the next two years (as I’ve consistently done since their appearance on the ballot) while <a href="https://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/david-lennon/hall-of-fame-ballot-2020-1.40705021">adding only Derek Jeter</a> (Class of 2020) during that span. Again, these were the elite, and the bar remained high. 
But this year’s ballot has created new complications and requires yet another adjustment, perhaps more radical than the Thanos finger-snap that halved my candidates for the 2019 class. The scale-tipper this time is David Ortiz, and while he qualifies under my previous methods of scrutiny, his link to MLB’s 2003 survey PED testing list as a (non-disciplinary) positive made me reconsider what has been labeled a "Small Hall" approach. 
In recent years, since PED-tinged players first began popping up on the ballot, I’ve stuck to a fairly black-and-white guideline: If MLB never punished a player for a PED-related offense, such as a suspension, then neither would I. Bonds and Clemens faced charges outside of baseball’s legislation, in a courtroom, but were not kept off the field because of those claims (MLB didn’t enter the disciplinary phase of its PED program until 2004). 
That penalty criteria currently is keeping Alex Rodriguez off my ballot, as the three-time MVP was twice suspended for PEDs, including the season-long ban in 2014. 
Although the 2003 survey was supposed to be anonymous — and even commissioner Rob Manfred has tried to discredit the testing that put Ortiz on the list in the first place — all parties acknowledge that his name indeed was there at a time when Ortiz seemed to magically rejuvenate his career with the Red Sox.  
That pulls us down into the PED rabbit hole anew, and this gray area prompted me to re-examine my process. Not only for the players polluted in some way by PEDs, but especially the other side, the ones who performed like Hall of Famers without (presumably) the boost from illegal chemicals. 
So where did that lead me? After Bonds, Clemens and Ortiz, the next domino was Sammy Sosa, who like Big Papi appeared on that 2003 survey test. If I’m going with Ortiz, then Sosa’s resume (609 homers) and larger-than-life impact on the sport (also like Papi) when baseball desperately needed it now gets him through the gate. And with Sosa follows Gary Sheffield, whose Bonds-BALCO connections don’t overshadow the fact that he was among the most feared hitters of his generation (509 homers, .907 OPS). 
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But we’re only halfway there. If those PED-tainted five deserve to be considered Hall of Famers, I believe there’s a need for balance so the (supposedly PED-free?) players aren’t penalized for doing it by the rules — or at least avoiding the public stain of such behavior. 
Fortunately, the 10-man ballot leaves room for five more, and this "clean" category — it’s important to put that in quotes — on the other side of the ballot now includes plenty of first-timers for me: Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Scott Rolen and Billy Wagner. 
As for Curt Schilling, I had him on my ballot before switching gears at the end of 2018 (for the Class of 2019), so he gets back on just in time for his last year of eligibility. 
Maybe it’s naive to think these five did not benefit from PED usage in some form, but at this point in history, they don’t wear the scarlet P and will be treated as such. 
Submitting a ballot with only three names (or fewer), as I had recently, didn’t make this process any easier. This year, it was especially tough, but I feel confident about the ballot as a whole. While it does again represent a major shift in how I choose to vote, this was the best way to reconcile some of the conflicts among this group and provide a fair representation for Cooperstown. 
It’s also worth noting that just as Baines’ special election prompted me to rethink the Hall of Fame three years ago, to some degree, the same can be said for Gil Hodges finally getting in last month. What was the point of all those years of gate-keeping for a deserving player whose admission clearly makes Cooperstown a better place? 
As a long-standing BBWAA member, ultimately we’re asked to vote players into the Hall of Fame, not keep them out. And staying on a "Small Hall" trajectory had the potential to be increasingly restrictive going forward, which would be a disservice to a number of players who possess the credentials, even if they weren’t seven-time MVPs like Bonds or a seven-time Cy Young Award winner like Clemens. 
The Hall of Fame is a museum meant to celebrate players’ careers and accomplishments, and upon further review, more celebration (within reason) should overrule less.

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David Lennon explains his Class of 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

Lennon explains his Class of 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

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