Say it ain't so: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens nearing Hall of Fame threshold

Baseball Hall of Fame ballots are due on New Year’s Eve, and word is that voters are getting a little misty-eyed over some of the most notorious cheaters in sports history.

Ryan Thibodaux, who tracks the votes from qualifying members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA), had collected 122 ballots as of Tuesday night, a little more than a quarter of the estimated total of 435.

And he has big news: Voting for the pharmaceutical daily double of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens is way up this year, clocking in at 71.3% each on the ballots, far greater than their 44.3% and 45.2%, respectively, last year — and dangerously close to the magic number of 75% that gains a player induction.

What’s more, Manny Ramirez, who was suspended in both 2009 and 2011 for using performance-enhancing drugs, has burst out of the blocks in his very first year of eligibility by appearing on 32% of the early ballots.

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If the Manny love stays strong, it could be a new record for first-year ballot percentage in the PED division, easily out-distancing Bonds, Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Plus, if Ramirez trends up as the others are now, he could eventually become the first inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame to have been caught using a female fertility drug.

Could Babe Ruth say that? Ty Cobb? Hank Aaron? I think not.

What’s going on here? When the BBWAA eliminatedsome older, inactive members from Hall of Fame voting in the summer of 2015, it appears the group’s revulsion for cheaters might have gone out the door as well. The younger guys (and I do mean guys almost exclusively) appear to be more lenient in how they view the long-suffering drug cheats of the diamond, Bonds and Clemens in particular.

You talk to some of these voters and it’s not that they have fallen in love with dopers, it’s just that they sound a little confused. There are quite a few players from the so-called "steroid era" in baseball (an era that we're still in) who never officially tested positive because, unlike almost every other sport on earth, MLB wasn’t testing players until it was too late to catch many of its worst cheaters.

So we think we know they cheated, and in some cases, we really do know, even if officially, we don’t always know. Got it? Good. For reference purposes, Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones, the two worst his-and-her cheaters this country has produced so far, never failed a drug test either.

Some of these voters offer a simple plea. They wish the Hall of Fame or MLB or someone in a position of authority would devise a set of standards to help them figure out what to do with steroid era candidates.

Basically, the thinking goes, who are they to judge?<

Well, if you sign up to be a Hall of Fame voter, then judging is pretty much your job description.

Baseball Hall of Fame voting is a big deal, no doubt, but I’m not sure it’s quite the conundrum some make it out to be. Election to the Baseball Hall of Fame is not a right, it’s a privilege. A voter who doesn’t think the Hall of Fame is the right spot for Bonds isn’t depriving him of his right to be a U.S. citizen, to earn a living or to buy a home where he wants. He’s simply saying Bonds is not worthy of this particular honor.

Let me give you an example from the Olympic world, which has been aware of PEDs since the 1960s and on top of them (as much as anyone can be when the bad chemists are way ahead of the good chemists) since the 1970s.

Ben Johnson was an accomplished sprinter in the 1980s before testing positive for steroids at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Is he a Hall of Famer?

How about Armstrong and Jones? Hall of Famers?

It sounds ridiculous to even ask, doesn’t it?

Baseball Hall of Fame voters, the answer is simple. No. Every time, no.