There will be no class of 2021 in the Baseball Hall of Fame, as voters held a closing ceremony on Tuesday, rejecting all 25 candidates for enrollment in Cooperstown.
Game status: The first three candidates – Curt Schilling (71.1%), Barry Bonds (61.8%) and Roger Clemens (61.6%) – only managed the required 75%.
What it says: Schilling, who had only 16 votes short, shared a letter on Facebook snatching baseball writers and demanding his removal in 2022.
- “I will not participate in the last year of voting. I am asking to be removed from the ballot,” Schilling wrote. “I’m going to refer to the veterans committee and the men whose opinions actually matter and who are able to actually judge a player.”
- Schilling has faced backlash in recent years for his political views on social media, which appear to have limited his support for the vote, according to ESPN. Among them was a 2016 tweet in which he appeared to support lynching journalists and, more recently, his support for the January 6 pro-Trump mafia attack on the US Chapter.
The best participants in the vote:
- Schilling: 71.1%
- Bonds: 61.8%
- Clemens: 61.6%
- Scott Rolen: 52.9%
- Omar Vizquel: 49/1%
- Billy Wagner: 46.4%
- Todd Helton: 44.9%
- Gary Sheffield: 40.6%
- Andruw Jones: 33.9%
- Jeff Kent: 32.4%
Note: It is only the ninth time that the American Baseball Writers Association has not chosen a candidate for the Hall of Fame, and the fourth since the rules were changed to eliminate the 1968 by-elections.
What’s next: Voters have 10 years to consider candidates, and Schilling, Bonds and Clemens remain on the ballot for nine.
- So next year’s election it will be the writers’ final referendum for all three controversial players.
- If they are not elected, their fate will fall to a group of 16 people in the Hall of Famers, team officials and historians known as the Veterans Committee.
Go deeper: