Players Union: 'Hard To Justify' Ignoring Bonds For Hall Of Fame
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- The union that represents Major League Baseball players was not particularly pleased with Wednesday's Hall of Fame shutout delivered by the Baseball Writers' Assn. of America (BBWAA), saying "to ignore the historic accomplishments of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens is hard to justify."
It was the first time since 1996 and just the eighth time in history, that the BBWAA failed to elect anyone to the baseball Hall of Fame as not one of the 37 candidates eligible for election was named to the necessary 75% of ballots.
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Observers said the vote results were an apparent statement on the suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs. Most notably, Clemens and San Francisco Giants star Bonds, in their first appearances on the BBWAA ballot, notched, respectively, 37.6% and 36.2%.
On that front, Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, released the following statement after the BBWAA failed to vote in a single candidate for 2013:
"Today's news that those members of the BBWAA afforded the privilege of casting ballots failed to elect even a single player to the Hall of Fame is unfortunate, if not sad. Those empowered to help the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum document the history of the game failed to recognize the contributions of several Hall of Fame worthy players. To ignore the historic accomplishments of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, for example, is hard to justify. Moreover, to penalize players exonerated in legal proceedings -- and others never even implicated -- is simply unfair. The Hall of Fame is supposed to be for the best players to have ever played the game. Several such players were denied access to the Hall today. Hopefully this will be rectified by future voting."
While Bonds did not immediately react to the vote results, Clemens took to Twitter.
"After what has been written and said over the last few years I'm not overly surprised," Clemens wrote. "To those who did take time to look at the facts, we very much appreciate it."
(Copyright 2013 CBS San Francisco. All rights reserved. CBS Sports contributed to this report.)
