Hall of Fame Debates: Steroids, Gambling and the Character Clause

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 11 min read

What the Hall of Fame ballot rules say about integrity and character, how voters handled gambling and the steroid era, and what the historical vote totals show for Rose, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire and others.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has a number rule and a morals rule, and nearly every argument about who belongs comes from the gap between them. The number rule is simple: a candidate on the writers' ballot needs 75 percent of the votes cast. The morals rule is the part of the voting instructions that asks writers to consider a candidate's integrity, sportsmanship and character along with his playing record. Nobody has ever defined how much weight the second part should carry, and the sport has spent decades finding that out one case at a time.

This article looks at the three great arguments that rule has produced. The first is gambling, where a bright-line ban from the sport's own rulebook decides the question for Pete Rose. The second is the era of performance-enhancing drugs, where there is no such ban and voters were left to decide for themselves. The third is the character clause itself, which appears to say more than it enforces. Every vote total below comes from the historical record through the 2025 season, and where the history is documented but not in the database, it is told without invented detail.

What the rules actually say

The Hall of Fame's ballot for the Baseball Writers' Association of America, the BBWAA, is open to players who have retired for at least five years and who played at least ten seasons in the major leagues. A candidate must be named on 75 percent of the ballots cast to be elected, and a candidate who falls below 5 percent in a year is removed from future ballots. A player can stay on the ballot for ten years; before a rule change announced in 2014 the limit was fifteen, and that change is part of this story. Each voter may name up to ten players, a limit that has shaped the steroid-era votes more than most fans realise. How Hall of Fame voting works walks through the mechanics and the committees that handle players the writers did not elect.

The line that matters for this article is in the instructions given to voters. They are told to base their decision on a player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to his teams. That wording is usually called the character clause. It does not say that a player must be a good person, and it does not list disqualifying acts. It leaves each voter to decide what integrity means, and to decide whether a given player fell short of it.

Two other points are useful. First, the Hall is a private institution, and its board can change rules. It has done so more than once, including the ten-year limit and a rule that anyone on Major League Baseball's permanently ineligible list may not appear on the ballot. Second, the writers are not the only path in. Committees of former players, executives and historians have, over the years, been renamed and reorganised, and they can elect players who fell short on the writers' ballot.

Gambling: the one bright line

The sport's rules on gambling are older and plainer than anything on performance-enhancing drugs. Rule 21 of the major league rules, posted in every clubhouse, says that a player or official who bets on a baseball game in which he has no duty to perform is ineligible for a year, and one who bets on a game in which he has a duty to perform, such as a game involving his own team, is permanently ineligible. The rule's roots lie in the 1919 World Series, when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of conspiring with gamblers to lose. The players were acquitted in a Chicago court in 1921, but Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned all eight for life regardless, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was one of the best hitters in the game. The bans have never been lifted.

Pete Rose is the modern test of the same rule. By the historical totals he finished with 4,256 hits, the most in major league history, 3,562 games played and 14,053 at-bats, with a .303 average. He was a central player in the Cincinnati teams of the 1970s, and anyone who wants the baseball context can read the Big Red Machine article. In August 1989, while managing the Reds, he accepted a permanent place on the ineligible list following an investigation into whether he had bet on baseball. The agreement did not include a finding that he had. In a book published in 2004, he acknowledged having bet on Reds games while managing the team.

The Hall's treatment of Rose is the clearest case where a rule decides what a vote might otherwise have decided. In 1991 the Hall's board voted that anyone on the permanently ineligible list could not appear on the ballot. Rose's name was therefore not on the printed ballot, but some writers wrote it in. The historical record shows 41 votes for him out of 430 ballots in 1992, 14 of 423 in 1993 and 19 of 456 in 1994. He never came near the 75 percent needed. Whether he should be reinstated is a decision for the commissioner's office, not for voters, and the status of that question can change, so a reader should check the current position with MLB and the Hall.

There is an honest argument on each side. Those who want Rose to stay out say the rule exists to protect the integrity of the games, that it is posted for everyone to see, and that a player who breaks it while managing a team has crossed the clearest line the sport draws. Those who want him in say the Hall is a record of baseball achievement, that his playing career is separate from his managing, and that lifelong exile exceeds the offence. This article does not decide the matter. It notes only that the question is different from the steroid one, because here a written rule exists.

The steroid era: no rule, no consensus

When the home runs of the late 1990s and early 2000s began to look unusual, there was no testing program and no agreed penalty in the sport for the drugs now associated with the period. The substances were illegal without a prescription under federal law, but the sport itself did not test, and it did not penalise players for using them until a testing program took effect in the early 2000s. The home run surge of the late 1990s and 2000s puts the numbers in context. The question for voters was never whether an enforced rule had been broken at the time, but whether it was acceptable to elect players whose records may have been aided by drugs.

The key documented events are these. A congressional committee held a hearing in March 2005 at which Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, among others, were questioned. Palmeiro, who had told Congress he had never used steroids, was suspended later in 2005 after a positive test under baseball's testing program. A report commissioned by the commissioner and led by former Senator George Mitchell, released in December 2007, named dozens of players, including Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. McGwire said publicly in 2010 that he had used steroids during his career. Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice in 2011, a conviction later overturned on appeal, and Clemens was acquitted of all charges in a 2012 trial. Those legal outcomes concerned testimony to investigators, not the Hall's question of whether the players belonged.

The playing records of the central figures are what make the debate hard. The historical record credits Bonds with 762 home runs, 2,558 walks and a .444 on-base percentage, and Clemens with 354 wins, 4,672 strikeouts and a 3.12 earned run average. McGwire hit 583 home runs, Sosa hit 609 and Palmeiro collected 3,020 hits along with 569 home runs. Numbers like those would have meant first-ballot election in most earlier eras.

How the votes moved

The vote totals show how the electorate behaved. Candidates with the largest cases were not elected, but their support did not stay still, and the table shows the first and last years of selected careers on the ballot.

Three patterns stand out. Bonds and Clemens climbed from under 40 percent to about two-thirds of the vote, and neither reached 75 percent in ten years, which is where their writers' eligibility ended. McGwire went the other way, falling from 128 votes to 54 as the debate hardened. Palmeiro dropped below 5 percent in his fourth year and was removed from the ballot. Notice that he had 3,020 hits, a milestone that had long been treated as close to a guarantee of election.

The 10-name limit and the crowded ballots made it harder. In 2013 the writers elected nobody, and the historical record shows that year's ballot included Bonds, Clemens, Mike Piazza, Sosa and others. A voter who admired a dozen candidates still had only ten slots. That is one reason the ten-year limit and the vote-share trajectory matter more than the single-year number.

Piazza, Raines, Rice and the long climb

The ballot is not only a record of exclusion. It is also a record of slow persuasion, and several players show that a candidate who starts well below 75 percent can still get there. Mike Piazza received 329 votes of 569 (58 percent) in 2013 and was elected in 2016 with 365 of 440 (83 percent). Tim Raines started with 132 of 543 votes in 2008 and was elected in 2017, his tenth and final year, with 380 of 442. Bert Blyleven received 83 of 473 votes in 1998 and was elected in 2011 with 463 of 581, a path of fourteen ballots. Jim Rice was elected on his fifteenth and last ballot in 2009 with 412 of 539, only seven votes above the 405 needed.

These cases matter for the steroid debate because they show that the electorate's opinion of a player can change. Raines and Blyleven rose because voters came to value what their records contained: on-base skill and stolen bases for one, strikeouts and shutouts for the other. They also show how little margin the 75 percent rule leaves. Rice's margin was seven votes. Had the limit stayed at fifteen, Bonds and Clemens would have had five more years, and one can only guess what their totals would have done.

Not every case ended in a long climb. Mariano Rivera was named on all 425 ballots in 2019 and became the first player elected unanimously. Ken Griffey was named on 437 of 440 ballots in 2016, and Ichiro Suzuki on 393 of 394 in 2025.

The character clause in practice

If the clause is read literally, it should keep out anyone with a bad record of behaviour. In practice it has been applied unevenly. The first class, elected in 1936, included Ty Cobb, who received 222 of 226 votes, despite a reputation for a fierce temper that historians still debate. The first Hall of Fame class of 1936 tells that story. Voters at the time weighed his playing record above all else.

Voters today describe four approaches. Some apply the clause strictly and leave off any player linked to performance-enhancing drugs, on the principle that cheating undermines integrity and sportsmanship. Some consider the evidence player by player, separating those who failed a test or admitted use from those who were only named or suspected. Others argue that baseball has always had cheating, from spitballs to amphetamines, and that the Hall should judge the record on the field. A fourth group of voters says the Hall is a museum, and that excluding the most famous players of a period gives a false picture of the game's history.

The problem with each approach is practical. Strict application relies on rumour for many players, because only a few ever failed a test, and it treats a player named in a report the same as one who admitted use. The case-by-case approach requires voters to act as judges with limited evidence. The museum argument has to explain why a plaque should not mention a player's controversies.

What the committees did

The writers' ballot is only one route. Committees of former players, managers, executives and writers consider those who fell off the ballot or were never on it. The committees have been renamed several times, and the historical record lists categories such as Veterans, Today's Game and Contemporary Era. Their votes are small: a committee of sixteen needs twelve votes for election. Harold Baines is the best-known recent example. He received no more than 33 votes on any writers' ballot, was removed after 2011 for falling below 5 percent, and was elected in 2019 by the Today's Game Era committee with 12 of 16 votes.

Baines illustrates the opposite problem from Bonds. His record, with 2,866 hits and 384 home runs, was solid and long. His election was widely debated, with critics saying his totals fell short of the usual standard. Bonds and Clemens, with far larger statistical cases, appear on later committee ballots in the database, and their status can change, so check the Hall's current list.

Common questions

Is Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame? No. He is on Major League Baseball's permanently ineligible list, and the Hall's 1991 rule bars players on that list from the ballot. He has the most hits in major league history, 4,256, and no other player is as clear a case of a statistical Hall of Famer who is excluded by rule.

Are steroid users banned from the Hall? No rule says so. The Hall has not published a list of disqualifying acts. Voters and committees decide for themselves under the character clause.

Why did Bonds and Clemens run out of time? Players can remain on the writers' ballot for ten years, and both were on it from 2013 to 2022. Before the 2014 rule change the limit was fifteen years.

What is the closest election on this list? Jim Rice cleared the 75 percent line in 2009 with 412 votes when 405 were needed. The threshold changes each year with the number of ballots cast.

Can a player on the permanently ineligible list be reinstated? The commissioner decides, not the Hall. Check MLB's current position, since such decisions can change.

Is betting on baseball still banned for players? Yes, the rule stands. Sports betting is legal for fans in many places but carries risk. It is for adults of legal age, and the US helpline is 1-800-GAMBLER. Moneyline, run line and totals explained covers how the numbers work for readers in places where it is legal.

Where to go next

To see how voters treat players with no such questions around them, read how Hall of Fame voting works, then the story of the first class of 1936. The history and Hall of Fame topic page collects more coverage, and the Hall's own site lists current members, eligible candidates and the latest rules.