One rewriting of baseball’s record books began in earnest in 1986. That year, a fireballing right-hander in Boston won 24 games en route to the AL Cy Young and the AL MVP. Meanwhile, a wiry 21-year-old with a familiar name reached the big leagues in Pittsburgh.
Across the 22 years their careers would overlap, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens earned 17% of all the MVP and Cy Young Awards handed out. They each claimed their occupation’s top honor seven times, obliterating the all-time marks. They each had two careers worth of Hall of Fame dominance — with peaks in the 1990s and 2000s matching or eclipsing their most fearsome contemporaries.
Bonds and Clemens should’ve both been elected, but hey Bonds didn’t get along with the media and since he never actually failed a drug test, there can’t be any other reason why he isn’t in. On the other hand, Clemens was just aloof so who knows what the deal really is there. Yet, David Ortiz has always been well-liked by everybody so do the math.