Jan 10, 2015 5 min read

You can’t do a story on the National Baseball Hall of Fame balloting without mentioning steroids. There was – and will be for a long time – as much, if not more, discussion about who was not elected to Cooperstown as there was about the four players, John Smoltz, Craig Biggio, Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson, who were voted in last week.

No Barry Bonds.

No Roger Clemens.

Arguments about whether suspected and/or convicted juicers such as Clemens and Bonds deserve to in the Hall of Fame are as predictable as pitchers and catchers reporting in February.

Bonds received 36.8 percent of the vote. Clemens got about the same, 37.5.

Both deserved to get in on the first ballot based on their on-field performance, but those who vote decided they deserve to not get what they deserve.

It’s punishment for using steroids.

For some reason, you can find plenty of stories about Pro Football Hall of Fame voting that never mention steroids.

I would bet that anyone who was in an NFL locker room in the last 20 years can look at the list of 15 NFL players who were announced as HOF finalists Thursday and name several suspected juicers.

Doctor Charles Yesalis, one of the world’s foremost experts on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, estimated 85 percent of players in the NFL are using some kind of PED.

So, why is there hardly a peep from any of the Pro Football Hall of Fame voters about steroids?

Most of the voters have been going into NFL locker rooms for at least 25 years. Only an idiot wouldn’t notice the ridiculous amount of muscle in the average NFL locker room and not believe most of it was unnatural.

So what’s up?

Are home runs more sacred than touchdowns?

Are strikeouts more sacred than sacks?

No sane person would believe Bonds could hit 73 home runs in a season with the body he had prior to 1998, when he looked like a college basketball point guard.

Nor would any sane person believe Clemens could put up the numbers he did after age 40 without all of those drugs his trainer never gave him.

NFL players weren’t dragged in front of Congress the way Major League Baseball players were. Why not?

You could make a good case for Congress staying out of it altogether, but if the purpose was to expose the dangers of PED use and prevent young athletes from using them, why weren’t the athletes from the sport that introduced steroids to American sports more than 40 years ago also called in?

Unnaturally oversized football players have been walking the planet a lot longer than unnaturally oversized baseball players.

Where do you think the father of baseball juicers, Jose Canseco, got the idea?

I decided a long time ago not to care. I lost my patience with the stupidity.

I know Bonds was a Hall of Fame player and I also know he was juiced to the point where it looked like one more injection or pill would cause his gigantic head to explode.

He chose to take an unorthodox, questionable, unethical approach to breaking some of baseball’s most sacred records.

Now, the voters are taking an unorthodox, questionable and in many cases, hypocritical approach when casting their ballots.

Too bad for Bonds and the rest of the juicers.

The standards for the two halls of fame are obviously different.

If you don’t believe me, just do a Google search of the two election results this week and count the number of times you find the word steroids in the baseball stories. Then see how long it takes you to find one Pro Football Hall of Fame story with the word steroid in it.

My unscientific guess would be the Hall of Fame in Canton has three steroid users for every Major League Baseball player ever suspected of using.

• Have you noticed how many former NFL players have shrunk since going to work for ESPN?

• Steelers fans may not want to hear it, but Joe Flacco is a better postseason quarterback than Ben Roethlisberger.

Flacco won the last five playoff games he’s started with 13 touchdown passes and no interceptions. He outplayed Roethlisberger, Andrew Luck and Peyton Manning in that stretch. Since 2010, Flacco is 7-2 in the playoffs with 20 touchdown passes, two interceptions and a 106.0 passer rating.

In his last four postseason starts, Roethlisberger is 1-3 with four touchdown passes and seven interceptions. His only winning start was against the New York Jets in 2010 when he was 10-19 for 133 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions and a 35.5 passer rating,

Roethlisberger’s passer rating in his last three postseason starts, all losses, are 77.4, 75.9, 79.3. For his career, Roethlisberger has 21 touchdown passes and 19 interceptions in the postseason. His passer rating is 83.3.

• The Steelers have gone four years since winning their last playoff game. They have not gone five years without a playoff win since Chuck Noll’s third season in 1971.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday sports column for the Observer-Reporter.