Baseball Hall of Fame

What would make up the "perfect" Baseball Hall of Fame player? 

Someone like Barry Bonds will be a Hall of Famer because of his tremendous power. Roger Clemens will be induced into Cooperstown because he won so many games and struck out so many batters. 

The 2013 MLB Hall of Fame class has been all over the news lately.

The announcement comes Wednesday, Jan. 9., and this year marks the first time that the some of the game's greatest but also most controversial players—Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling—are eligible to be elected.

MLB Network has brought in everybody and their mother to give their two cents on who should be elected and how the era should be evaluated based on the prevalence of performance enhancing drugs.

Home-run king Barry Bonds is statistically one of the most coveted hitters to ever walk into a batter's box, but it will be having given in to an era full of off-the-field temptations that will keep him out of the hallowed ground of Cooperstown.

With the 2013 Hall of Fame announcements just a matter of weeks away, it's easy to look back at all the past players who have been inducted into Cooperstown as they represent the best the game has ever seen and will forever be enshrined in history.

But what about those who don't have a plaque in Cooperstown? There are many players who could arguably be in the Hall of Fame, but for one reason or another they've been left off the final ballots and remain on the outside looking in.

Kevin Walker kept Bo Jackson out of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

Walker is the Cincinnati Bengals linebacker who tackled Jackson, then a Los Angeles Raiders running back, during a 1990 NFL playoff game. The tackle resulted in a hip injury for Jackson which he never recovered from.

For a five- to six-year span, Sammy Sosa was one of the best home run hitters in MLB. 

With Sosa eligible to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame for the first time, the question is whether or not he belongs with the greatest players in the history of the game.

Could Sosa be part of the 2013 Hall of Fame class? Does his career home run total warrant a near-automatic bid ticket to Cooperstown?

Five years ago on Aug. 7, Barry Bonds hit home run No. 756 for his career, taking over baseball's all-time home run record from Hank Aaron. 

To the surprise of no one, the recent Barry Bonds perjury trial ended with a result that satisfied neither party and only really succeeded in stirring up another round of PED-related articles. 

One of the most common type article to enter the fray is how the Hall of Fame will view such candidates; after all, Bonds (and others guilty/suspected of usage) put up some impressive numbers during his career. 

As much as Major League Baseball would like to set the issue of steroid use behind them and move on, the debate is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

The recent Barry Bonds trial and Manny Ramirez's sudden retirement due to a second failed drug test further pulled the issue back into the spotlight, and Roger Clemens' trial this summer will keep us from forgetting the issue this season.

Let's say there is a university going through a rough patch.

Previously, it was viewed as one of the best schools in the nation, and it pulled in billions of dollars in endowments. Teachers who succeeded there, would go onto academic fame and be set for the rest of their lives financially.

However, a teacher's strike in 1994 had ruined the university's reputation.

The public thought the strike showed that the university and its teachers only cared about the size of their bank accounts.