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Alex Rodriguez will probably never get into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, despite putting up numbers worthy of induction. Former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, who presided over the Steroid Era of baseball, is in the Hall of Fame. A-Rod says that feels a little bit like “hypocrisy.”
Of course, Alex Rodriguez is also the same guy who says he is a “big Rob Manfred fan” and thinks the current Major League Baseball Commissioner “probably belongs in Cooperstown.” So, anything he says should be taken with a Mount Everest-sized grain of salt.
Alex Rodriguez thinks if Bud Selig is in the Hall of Fame, Bonds and Clemens should be as well
During an appearance this week on The Stephen A. Smith Show, Rodriguez and Smith were discussing Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. All three were contemporaries of A-Rod, and all three were huge figures in the Steroid Era.
“Alex Rodriguez, do you believe you deserve to be in the Hall of Fame?” Stephen A. Smith asked A-Rod, adding, “I also ask about even somebody like a Barry Bonds. How do you feel about that?”
“Yeah, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens to me are absolutely no-brainers,” Alex Rodriguez replied, shedding a little light on how he feels about whether he too should be enshrined. He went on to say that if you took away 50 percent of their stats they would still be Hall of Famers. Applying that same logic to Rodriguez’s career, he would have around 1,600 hits, 350 home runs, 165 stolen bases, over 1,000 runs, over 1,000 RBI, a .295 batting average, and 1.5 MVP awards. Are those Hall of Fame numbers? Maybe. Maybe not.
“All of this stuff you’re talking about was under Bud Selig’s watch. And the fact that those two guys [Bonds and Clemens] 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 added.