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Alex Rodriguez will see his name for the fifth time on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the Class of 2026, but he’s not likely to make it given his ties to performance-enhancing drugs despite his illustrious career numbers.
But Rodriguez feels “hypocrisy surrounds the Hall” due to Bud Selig, the ex-MLB commissioner who was in charge during the infamous Steroid Era, residing in Cooperstown.
“All of this stuff you’re talking about was under Bud Selig’s watch,” Rodriguez said on Stephen A. Smith’s radio show after a comment about Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, per Awful Announcing.
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“And the fact that those two guys are not in, but somehow, Bud Selig is in the Hall of Fame, that to me feels like there’s a little bit, some hypocrisy around that.”
Rodriguez, and any player on the Hall of Fame ballot, needs at least 75% of votes to enter the Hall. Since he didn’t receive 40% of the vote in any of his first four times on the ballot, the results are not expected to change for Rodriguez in 2026.
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Selig was inducted into the Hall of Fame after getting enough votes from the Today’s Game Era Committee, which has only 16 voters. Meanwhile, players like Rodriguez, Bonds and others connected to PEDs during their careers have a much larger pool of Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) members voting for them each year.
Selig, 91, took over as acting commissioner in 1992 before becoming full-time commissioner in 1998. Serving through the 2015 season, Selig was at the forefront of the Steroid Era and all the controversy that came with it.
While it was fun to see players like McGwire and Sosa battling each other for the single-season home run record in 1998, as well as Bonds smashing 73 homers in 2001 to snap McGwire’s previous record of 70, there were rumors and reports regarding PEDs in the sport that didn’t get the recognition they should’ve from MLB until 2004.
The Joint Drug Agreement was put in place that season, and the infamous Mitchell Report was released on Dec. 13, 2007. The 20-month investigation by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell led to a 409-page report, which alleged a “collective failure” within MLB to address the problem of PEDs, while naming 89 current and former ballplayers who allegedly used them.
Among those listed in the Mitchell Report were Bonds, Jason Giambi and Jeremy Giambi, Roger Clemens, Gary Sheffield, Eric Gagne, Andy Pettitte, Brian Roberts, Miguel Tejada, Mo Vaughn, Jose Canseco and many more.
In Rodriguez’s case, he served the longest suspension in league history for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal, which was a Florida clinic accused of distributing PEDs to world-famous athletes. Rodriguez was initially suspended 211 games, but it was later reduced to a full 162-game season that he had to miss in 2014.
Despite being fifth in home runs hit over his lengthy MLB career, Rodriguez won’t be in the Hall of Fame anytime soon if Bonds isn’t. Bonds still owns the home run record with 762 homers over 12,606 plate appearances.
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