Hall of Famers happy to see Bonds, Clemens denied

NEW YORK — Keep all the cheaters out of our club.

That was the prevailing sentiment from several baseball Hall of Famers who were happy to see Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa excluded from the Cooperstown fraternity Wednesday.

“I’m kind of glad that nobody got in this year,” former Detroit Tigers outfielder Al Kaline said. “I feel honored to be in the Hall of Fame. And I would’ve felt a little uneasy sitting up there on the stage, listening to some of these new guys talk about how great they were.”

Goose Gossage went even further — he often does.

“I think the steroids guys that are under suspicion got too many votes,” he said. “I don’t know why they’re making this such a question and why there’s so much debate. To me, they cheated. Are we going to reward these guys?”

Not this year, at least.

Baseball writers pitched a Hall of Fame shutout for 2013, failing to elect anyone for only the second time in 42 years. Among those rejected were a trio of steroid-tainted stars in Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, all eligible for the first time.

Bonds received just 36.2 percent of the vote and Clemens 37.6 in results announced by the Hall and the Baseball Writers' Association of America, both well short of the 75 percent needed for election — yet still too close for Gossage’s taste. Sosa, eighth on the career home run list, got 12.5 percent.

“Wow! Baseball writers make a statement,” Hall of Fame reliever Dennis Eckersley wrote on Twitter. “Feels right.”

The results keep the sport’s career home run leader (Bonds) and most decorated pitcher (Clemens) out of Cooperstown — at least for now. Bonds, Clemens and Sosa have up to 14 more years on the writers’ ballot to gain baseball’s highest honor.

“If they let these guys in ever — at any point — it’s a big black eye for the Hall and for baseball,” Gossage said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s like telling our kids you can cheat, you can do whatever you want, and it’s not going to matter.”

Bonds, baseball’s only seven-time MVP, hit 762 home runs — including a record 73 in 2001. He has denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs and was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice for giving an evasive answer in 2003 to a grand jury investigating PEDs.

Clemens, the game’s lone seven-time Cy Young Award winner, is third in career strikeouts (4,672) and ninth in wins (354). He was acquitted of perjury charges stemming from congressional testimony during which he denied using PEDs.

“If you don’t think Roger Clemens cheated, you’re burying your head in the sand,” Gossage said.

Sosa, who finished with 609 home runs, 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.

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