NO HALL PASS

Baseball’s Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, N.Y., inducts four worthy players on Sunday. Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz, all elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, will bask in the summer sunshine, deliver heartfelt speeches, and join the pantheon of the sport’s greats.

The clean greats, that is. You won’t be seeing Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa or Mark McGwire in that number anytime soon. All tainted by baseball’s shameful era of performance enhancing drugs (steroids) and inflated statistics (and bodies), they simply will not be elected by the writers.

You won’t see Pete Rose. Maybe ever, due to his lifetime ban for the game for betting on the sport. But this year you won’t even see him in the pleasant little village that houses the Hall of Fame.

Rose, baseball’s all-time leader in hits, has made the trip to Cooperstown annually to sign autographs (many for a fee). He hopes to have a meeting in the near future with Commissioner Rob Manfred to discuss reinstatement and he told Sports Illustrated his hiatus this year will be “a kind of a cooling-off period.”

The debate about Rose being brought back into the fold and whether the others can ever be elected will go on and on. Sunday will be, and should be, about the great pitchers (Johnson, Martinez, Smoltz) and a fine hitter (Biggio), who will be the first full-time Houston Astros player inducted.

Gentlemen, enjoy your day.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .