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Alex Rodriguez will see his name on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the fifth time for the class of 2026, but he is unlikely to make it given his ties to performance-enhancing drugs despite his illustrious career numbers.
But Rodriguez believes “hypocrisy surrounds the room” because of Bud Selig, the former MLB commissioner who was in charge during the infamous steroid era, residing in Cooperstown.
“All these things you’re talking about were on Bud Selig’s watch,” Rodriguez said on Stephen A. Smith’s radio show after a comment about Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, according to Awful Announcing.
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Former professional baseball player Alex Rodriguez attends an NBA game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Miami Heat at Kaseya Center on March 7, 2025, in Miami, Florida. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
“And the fact that those two guys aren’t there, but somehow Bud Selig is in the Hall of Fame, I feel like there’s a little bit of hypocrisy around that.”
Rodriguez, and any player on the Hall of Fame ballot, needs at least 75 percent of the vote to enter the Hall. Since he did not receive 40% of the vote in any of his first four appearances on the ballot, the results are not expected to change for Rodriguez in 2026.
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Selig was inducted into the Hall of Fame after receiving enough votes from the Today’s Game Era committee, which has only 16 voters. Meanwhile, players like Rodriguez, Bonds and others linked to PEDs during their careers have a much larger pool of Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) members voting for them each year.
Selig, 91, took over as interim commissioner in 1992 before becoming full-time commissioner in 1998. During the 2015 season, Selig was at the forefront of the steroid era and all the controversies that came with it.
Commissioner Emeritus Allan H. “Bud” Selig speaks during the 2017 Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Sunday, July 30, 2017, in Cooperstown, New York. (Photo by Alex Trautwig/MLB via Getty Images)
While it was fun to see players like McGwire and Sosa compete for the single-season home run record in 1998, as well as Bonds smashing 73 home runs in 2001 to break McGwire’s previous record of 70, there were rumors and reports regarding PEDs in sports not getting the recognition they should have from MLB until 2004.
The Joint Drug Deal was implemented that season, and the infamous Mitchell Report was released on December 13, 2007. The 20-month investigation by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell led to a 409-page report, which alleged a “collective failure” within MLB to address the problem of PEDs, while naming 89 current and former baseball players who allegedly used them.
Among those listed in the Mitchell report were Bonds, Jason Giambi and Jeremy Giambi, Roger Clemens, Gary Sheffield, Eric Gagne, Andy Pettitte, Brian Roberts, Miguel Tejada, Mo Vaughn, Jose Canseco and many others.
Alex Rodriguez broadcasts before Game 6 of the National League Championship Series at Dodger Stadium on October 20, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
In Rodriguez’s case, he served the longest suspension in league history for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal, a Florida clinic accused of distributing PEDs to world-famous athletes. Rodriguez was initially suspended for 211 games, but this was later reduced to a full 162-game season which he had to miss in 2014.
Although he is fifth in home runs hit during his long MLB career, Rodriguez won’t be in the Hall of Fame anytime soon if Bonds isn’t. Bonds still holds the home run record with 762 home runs in 12,606 plate appearances.
