No one makes MLB Hall of Fame as character issues muddle ballots

The National Baseball Hall of Fame voters, who hold the awesome power of bestowing immortality on the greatest players in the sport - or, if you prefer, who face the awful duty of determining how that power should be applied - pitched a collective shutout Tuesday, failing to send a single player to Cooperstown, N.Y.

On a day when luminaries such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling found out they would have to wait at least another year to gain induction to the hall - each fell short, for the ninth year in a row, of the 75% vote threshold required for election - the sole winner, such as it was, was the so-called "character" clause in the voting instructions that, more than statistics, decided this year's outcome.

Schilling, a two-time strikeout champion and six-time all-star over a 20-year career, was poised to make the cut this year after slowly building support over the years among the 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America who make up the electorate. However, Schilling, a vociferous right-wing provocateur and Twitter antagonist, appears to have been penalized by some voters for his political views and intolerance.

As for Bonds and Clemens - the premier hitter and pitcher of their generation, if not of all time - both have unassailable statistical cases, but both continue to fall short of election because of their association with performance-enhancing drugs.

This year's shutout brings to a halt an unprecedented expansion of the rolls of Cooperstown, with the writers electing 22 players between 2014 and 2020 - more new entrants to the Hall of Fame in a seven-year span than were elected in the 14 years preceding it combined - including four each in 2015, 2018 and 2019.

But this summer's induction, should Hall of Fame officials permit it to go forward, would still see four people enshrined: Derek Jeter and Larry Walker, who were elected by the writers in January 2020, and Ted Simmons and former union chief Marvin Miller, who were elected by the Modern Baseball Era Committee in December 2019. All were due to be inducted in July 2020 until the ceremony was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Hall of Fame, in its instructions to voters, asks them to make their choices based on not only players' record and ability but also their "integrity, sportsmanship [and] character" - words many voters have cited in refusing to choose steroid-tainted sluggers since the first of them, Mark McGwire in 2007, began appearing on the ballot.

Schilling presented an altogether different calculus, with some voters acknowledging his career record - which includes 216 regular season wins, 3,116 strikeouts and a dazzling 11-2 record and 2.23 ERA in the postseason - was worthy of election but opted to leave him off their ballots anyway because of his political views and social media behavior.

Schilling has endorsed the lynching of journalists and was fired by ESPN in 2016 for mocking transgender people. More recently, he has voiced support for the perpetrators of the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That was well after the deadline for voters to submit their ballots; however, in its wake at least one voter petitioned the Hall of Fame, unsuccessfully, to alter their ballot retroactively to a "no" vote for Schilling.

"Curt Schilling needs to know, or be reminded, there are consequences to what he says," Mark Faller, sports editor of The Arizona Republic, wrote in a column last month explaining his "no" vote for Schilling. " ... If he ever deserved this honor, he lost it by his own words and actions. He does not deserve to be on that podium in July."

Other voters have pointed out the hypocrisy of applying the character clause to Schilling, Bonds, Clemens and others when the rolls of Cooperstown already include various scoundrels, womanizers and racists - as well as, almost certainly, steroid users who failed to get caught.

After years of steady gains among voters, Schilling's candidacy appeared to reach a crucial benchmark a year ago, when he was named on 278 of 397 ballots cast - or 70%. In the history of the writers' ballot, 20 of the 21 players who hit the 70% mark with additional years of eligibility eventually gained election. (The lone exception, Jim Bunning, would be voted in by the Veterans Committee.)

This year's shutout could lend more ammunition to critics who say the writers are the wrong group to adjudicate debates over character and integrity, let alone decide whose career body of work was and wasn't worthy of Cooperstown. Increasingly, those critics include many of the writers eligible to cast votes. (The Washington Post is among a handful of media outlets that do not permit their otherwise eligible employees to vote for the Hall of Fame.)

In recent years, a handful of prominent baseball writers, including Buster Olney and Jeff Passan of ESPN and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic, have decided to stop voting for the Hall of Fame or said they were considering stopping - out of frustration, as Rosenthal wrote, with "the inconsistencies we cannot avoid, the false equivalencies we create [and] the rationalizations that require leaps in logic."

The period of reflection regarding the candidacies of Bonds, Clemens and Schilling is nearly expired. All three drop off the writers' ballot after next year's vote, their 10th and final year of eligibility.

But for anyone wishing the character debate would simply go away, there is bad news: Among the players who will appear for the first time on next year's ballot are David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez, sluggers associated with steroids during their careers and whose candidacies all but ensure the character clause will be in play for at least another decade.

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