Baseball Hall of Fame Vote 2013 Live Stream (VIDEO)
The ballots are in and the results are ready to be announced on Wednesday, January 9. But will any living players be making it into the Baseball Hall of Fame following a year of drug-enhancement fallouts?
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa all have numbers to support a rightful claim to fame. But all three players have also been linked to performance enhancing drugs, leaving judges to scratch heads and dig up graves in hope of finding talent.
In order for a player to be successfully nominated into the Hall of Fame, the Baseball Writers Association of America must put in a 75 percent vote in favor. Due to the controversy drudged up by drugs, some fear that the only qualified players left will be the dead. Having no living inductees could turn in to a bit of a no-show on Feb. 24, when the association plans to crown the winners.
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Fans and voters alike have been torn over the issue of what should justify keeping players off the ballot; should direct evidence be required? Or is the mere link to possible drug usage enough? And in the case of Bond and Clemens, New York Times writer Nate Silver has argued that both players had the stats to make the Hall of Fame long before their documented drug usage began. For Silver, that means that leaving the players out of the Hall of Fame now would be more on the grounds of principle, setting a new benchmark for the future of baseball inductees.
It would not be fair to "dismiss a player's entire body of work" on the grounds of mere suspicion that a player may have used performance enhancing drugs, according to Jon Weisman of The Vote. Silver also pointed out that better and more well known players are more likely to face harsher scrutiny in the media- with or without a lack of evidence.
Watch here, as the argument unfolds and the winners are announced for 2013.
