The 2021 Baseball Hall of Fame class doesn't exist, and that can largely be accredited to the fact that some top names on the ballot, like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, were known or suspected steroid users. Many voters obviously didn't think that this should have prevented them from becoming a plaque in Cooperstown's famous museum, seeing as Bonds and Clemens finished with 61.8 and 61.6 percent votes, respectively. However, some think that tainted careers due to PED use should forever keep a player out of the Hall of Fame, making Alex Rodriguez's impending Hall of Fame eligibility a very intriguing case.
But former slugger Jose Canseco, whose steroid use is about as well-known as anyone's, says that the Hall is already filled with PED users. What's more is that he personally claims to have injected a couple of those Hall of Famers himself.
"I think what you lack to understand is that there are probably ten in the Hall of Fame right now that used PEDs," Canseco said on Barstool Sports' "Pardon My Take" podcast. "A couple, I injected myself. I won't mention who they are... the names are over. That part of my life is over."
Revealing steroid users wouldn't be new ground for Canseco, who wrote that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and other players used steroids in his book "Juiced." It's a move he regrets, and he's explained this multiple times, from a 2008 A&E documentary — "If I could meet with Mark McGwire and these players, I definitely would apologize to them. They were my friends. I admired them. I respected them," — to now, in his interview with "Pardon My Take."
"It wasn't a good thing, I regret doing it," Canseco said. "They were my friends, they were my teammates, my whole family got threatened, I got put in jail because of it. I got put in jail for telling the truth. No, it wasn't a good thing. I lost millions because of it, I'm detached from Major League Baseball completely, so no. It wasn't a good thing."
Canseco doesn't believe as though his statistics are enough to get him in the Hall of Fame, all things considered, though he does think Bonds belongs. Canseco finished with 462 career home runs, exactly 300 behind Bonds' all-time leading number.
Next year is the final season of eligibility for Bonds and Clemens. Will this piece of insight lead voters to examine past players and determine whether or not steroids warrant a ban from the Hall? Or will writers take this new claim from Canseco, an outspoken figure with many interesting opinions, with a grain of salt?
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