The AP wrote this morning:
It could have been the greatest Hall of Fame class since Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were installed in the very first vote back in 1936.
It would have been if those eligible had allowed their natural ability to carry the day.
Barry Bonds never needed steroids to be great. It was already in his genes, and the numbers he put up before he suddenly grew larger than life would have been enough to make him a first-ballot choice the moment he was eligible.
Sammy Sosa might have gotten in even without the cartoonish home run totals he and Mark McGwire put up beginning in the late 1990s.
They’re all on the ballot released Wednesday by the Hall of Fame, ready to be judged for the first time by more than 600 longtime members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. They need 75 percent of the vote to be enshrined among the greats of the past.
And they’re not going to get it.
Not this year, anyway. Not with the Steroids Era still looming over Major League Baseball.
