Hall of Famers Respond About this years non-class

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"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."

What really gets me is seeing how some of these players associated with drugs have jumped over many of the greats in our game," Kaline said. "Numbers mean a lot in baseball, maybe more so than in any other sport. And going back to Babe Ruth, and players like Harmon Killebrew and Frank Robinson and Willie Mays, seeing people jump over them with 600, 700 home runs, I don't like to see that.
"I don't know how great some of these players up for election would've been without drugs. But to me, it's cheating," he added. "Numbers are important, but so is integrity and character. Some of these guys might get in someday. But for a year or two, I'm glad they didn't."

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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?"

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."
"I really don't understand it. To me it's cut and dried. They're cheaters," he added. "I think they ought to reinstate these records - (Roger) Maris' record and (Hank) Aaron as our home run champion."

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

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Hall of Fame pitcher Juan Marichal doesn't see it that way. He thinks Bonds, Clemens and Sosa belong in Cooperstown.
"I think that they have been unfair to guys who were never found guilty of anything," Marichal said. "Their stats define them as immortals. That's the reality and that cannot be denied."

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Hall of Fame slugger Mike Schmidt said that comes with the territory.
"It's not news that Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Palmeiro, and McGwire didn't get in, but that they received hardly any consideration at all. The real news is that Biggio and Piazza were well under the 75 percent needed," Schmidt wrote in an email to the AP.
"Curt Schilling made a good point, everyone was guilty. Either you used PEDs, or you did nothing to stop their use. This generation got rich. Seems there was a price to pay."

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“The thing is, I played a long time in the majors, and a couple more in the minors, and I didn’t play with that many Hall of Fame-caliber ballplayers,” Dawson said. “I didn’t play against more than a few Hall of Famers.”

“I’m mad about what they did to the game. I think of Hank (Aaron) and Willie (Mays) and Mickey (Mantle), it makes me really angry,” Dawson said. “We worked really, really hard to get to a certain level. They did it with drugs.”

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