Baseball Hall of Fame Elects Nobody To 2013 Class

Former Cubs star's chances clouded by suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs

Judgment day has come and gone for former Chicago Cubs star Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens to find out their Hall of Fame fates.

The verdict? They're outta there.

With the cloud of steroids shrouding many candidacies, baseball writers failed for only the second time in more than four decades to elect anyone to the Hall.

About 600 people were eligible to vote in the BBWAA election, all members of the organization for 10 consecutive years at any point.

Results were announced at 1 p.m. Wednesday, with the main focus on first-time eligibles that included Bonds, baseball's only seven-time Most Valuable Player, and Clemens, the only seven-time Cy Young Award winner.

Sosa, who played for the Cubs from 1992-2004, finished his career with 609 home runs. However, he was among those who tested positive in MLB's 2003 anonymous survey, The New York Times reported in 2009. He told a congressional committee in 2005 that he never took illegal performance-enhancing drugs and famously appeared to have trouble speaking English during his testimony.

Since 1965, the only years the writers didn't elect a candidate were when Yogi Berra topped the 1971 vote by appearing on 67 percent of the ballots cast and when Phil Niekro headed the 1996 ballot at 68 percent. Both were chosen the following years when they achieved the 75 percent necessary for election.

"It really would be a shame, especially since the other people going in this year are not among the living, which will make for a rather strange ceremony," said the San Francisco Chronicle's Susan Slusser, president of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

The Hall was prepared to hold a news conference Thursday with any electees. Or to not have one.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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