With all of the controversy surrounding performance-enhancing drugs and baseball, it’s always an interesting debate when it comes to the Hall of Fame and whether or not certain players deserve to be left out of it. Three of the key names on this year’s ballot include Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens–all of which have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs over the last couple of years.

In my mind, none of these three stars deserve to be in the Hall of Fame because all signs point to them using performance-enhancing drugs–whether they want to come clean about it or not. The fact that Bonds never hit more than 50 home runs once in his career and all of a sudden belts 73 during the 2001 season is a major reason to be under suspicion.

The same can be said about Sosa considering he never hit more than 40 home runs once his entire career and all of a sudden recorded 66 and 63 home runs from 1998-99. Both Bonds and Sosa can defend themselves all they want, but how can you ignore these type of statistics?

As for Clemens, it may be different on his end as a pitcher, but it doesn’t help his case that others have come out and linked his name to using performance-enhancing drugs. Seven Cy-Young awards is impressive for any pitcher, but that still doesn’t make him worth of joining Cooperstown if he had an upper advantage over the rest of the players in the league.

Clearly, the voters will be torn when it comes to whether or not these three players are worthy, but in my mind–none of them deserve the honor for some of the poor decisions they made throughout their career that will forever give them the label of being cheaters.

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