Kovacevic: One more year to keep the cheaters out

Right around dinnertime Tuesday night, for the first time since 2013, the Baseball Hall of Fame welcomed exactly zero new members to its ranks.

And my goodness, was that ever easy to digest.

Not because no one's worthy. My own ballot was submitted with three checked boxes -- Curt Schilling, Scott Rolen, Todd Helton -- so I obviously couldn't have objected if they'd made the cut. For Rolen and Helton, in particular, I'm encouraged and hopeful they will someday. More on Schilling in a bit.

But no, the delectable part was this: The cheaters are almost all the way out.

It takes 75% of the total vote to make it, and Barry Bonds finished with 61.8%, Roger Clemens 61.6%, Sammy Sosa 17.0%. All three were in their ninth year of the maximum 10 a player can stay on the ballot and, thus, all three have only one more year before they go poof. With not much momentum, either: Bonds had 60.7% last year, Clemens 61.0%, Sosa 13.9%, out of the total of 401 cast.

Put it another way: Bonds needs roughly 50 additional net votes next year, and all he netted this year was a plus-7. I can't see that occurring based on precedent.

Here's hoping for poof.

And here's the full chart:

I recited just last week my long list of reasons for not voting for cheaters, so I don't feel the need to repeat. Suffice it to say cheating is cheating, and Major League Baseball itself set the sporting standard for striving to safeguard against cheating more than a century ago. That's why the character clause was placed on the first Hall ballots in 1936 -- not by the writers but by the Hall -- and why it remains there today.

There's overwhelming evidence that Bonds, Clemens and Sosa cheated. And in the specific case of Bonds, there's arguably more evidence of cheating than there's been for any athlete who ever lived, with the book 'Game of Shadows,' co-authored by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, based on more than 200 interviews and 1,000 documents. Not even Lance Armstrong can touch that.

At a time when the baseball world just lost the one, true home run king, the legendary Hank Aaron, shielding the game from cheating should resonate more than ever ...

... but apparently it doesn't.

I don't make a habit of judging fellow writers or voters, in baseball or any sport, but sorry, I can't help but wonder: How many of the people who voted for Bonds to be in the Hall also wrote rebukes of the Astros for the sign-stealing scandal?

What would anyone guess would be the common ground on that Venn diagram?

More than half?

Again, here's hoping. The 2022 eligibles include Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Tim Lincecum, David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez, Jake Peavy, Mark Teixeira and others -- and yeah, I'm aware some of these will come with their own baggage -- but the field being more crowded can only help keep Bonds and Clemens out.

Anyway, the zero new members in this class isn't ideal, especially with the actual Hall of Fame -- meaning the institution in Cooperstown, N.Y. -- struggling badly as a business amid the pandemic, with attendance plunging from 275,000 in 2019 to 50,000 this past year. Sure, there'll still be a class inducted this July 25 -- Derek Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons, Marvin Miller -- because the ceremony last year had to be canceled, but fewer names equals less visibility and less revenue.

I left Schilling off my first ballot four years ago because of a criminal proceeding against him in Rhode Island, not because of anything he'd done or said. I added him back once that was cleared up, but he's damaged himself with a lot of voters with hateful remarks that exhibited racism, homophobia and -- in a personal favorite -- the virtues of executing journalists. Most recently, he spoke up in favor of sedition against the United States.

To me, none of those things are about favoring one political party or another. They're just reprehensible.

I'll keep my views on all of that to myself until the next ballot arrives.

Presuming he's even on it:

When that ballot does arrive, be certain that we'll be revisiting all these arguments again, not just Bonds, Clemens and Sosa. The specter of cheating, in all its shapes and scopes, will always be with all sports, not just baseball. But the difference between the baseball culture and most of the rest is that baseball -- with a couple of massive exceptions -- has been open and aggressive in calling it out. I've always respected that.