On Tuesday, the Baseball Writers Association of America did not elect Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to the Baseball Hall of Fame for a tenth and final time.
It was a controversial decision across the baseball world. One person who spoke out in opposition Wednesday was former Pirates manager Jim Leyland.
"There's no question Barry Bonds is a Hall of Famer, along with Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling,” Leyland said on 93.7 The Fan Wednesday.
Leyland was Bonds’ first manager from 1986-1992. The two didn’t always get along – with the most infamous example being Leyland ranting at Bonds’ work ethic during spring training – but the two have a mutual respect for each other, which is why the former skipper spoke out about his disappointment that Bonds wasn’t inducted.
There is no denying that, as a player, Bonds is one of the greatest in the sport’s history, but his Hall of Fame candidacy centered around his link to steroids. While Bonds never failed a drug test, it is almost universally accepted that he did use banned substances for part of his career.
To Leyland, that’s not enough to disqualify him or Clemens.
“If people did it, do I think it would enhance their performance? I would say yes, it probably, definitely, helped them, if they did” Leyland said. “But I don’t know if they did it, and I’m not going to accuse anybody of it because I don’t know.”
Bonds received 66% of the vote on this year’s ballot, 36 votes show of reaching the 75% threshold to be elected. Clemens fell 39 votes short.
Over the past decade, the pair became the faces of the steroid era, and while some players who were linked to steroids at some point, including 2022 inductee David Ortiz, have been elected, they never received the same support.
It is undeniable that the boom from the steroid era helped create excitement around the game after the player’s strike of 1994 and 1995.
“If you want to know the truth, that period of time when [Sammy] Sosa and [Mark] McGwire were going at it with home runs like they were, and when Bonds was hitting home runs and doing his stuff in San Francisco, people were happy,” Leyand said. “They loved it. They couldn’t wait to see Sammy hit one or McGwire hit one. Baseball was booming. You can talk all you want after the fact, but it was exciting for baseball. Right, wrong or indifferent.”
Bonds, Clemens and Schilling will be eligible for the Hall of Fame this December via the Today’s Game committee.
