As for if Roger and Bonds should make it into the Hall (on the first ballot):

Thousands — literally thousands — of baseball players used steroids, but none of them won 350+ games or hit 700+ home runs. You could take some chemical from space that increased strength, speed and hand-eye coordination 1000 percent, and an okay ballplayer would not become Clemens or Bonds. They were among the best ever, chemically-enhanced or not.

With Clemens, it seems to have helped him stay on the field. With Bonds, his steroids were too good and made him some kind of superhuman freak at 36 (his ’01 season is still one of the most absurd in baseball history, maybe only trailing Luis Gonzalez’s).

But no matter what they did, they deserve the Hall, and if the writers don’t vote them in it’s a steaming pile of bull.

I just hope that the writers are even-handed

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I hope to win the lottery without having bought a ticket.

Yes but the real field day will be in five years when the writers get their first chance to pass judgment on both Clemens and Bonds.

A lot can happen between now and then – Bonds may stand convicted of perjury; Clemens will almost certainly have lost his defamation suit but may have avoided conviction. I just hope that the writers are even-handed and we don’t end up with a very low total for Barry and a higher one for Roger. Then the cries of “racism” will be deafening.