{"id":1081,"date":"2013-01-11T12:54:03","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T17:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/?p=1081"},"modified":"2013-01-11T13:02:41","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T18:02:41","slug":"craig-biggio-says-lumping-him-with-ped-users-unfair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/2013\/01\/11\/craig-biggio-says-lumping-him-with-ped-users-unfair\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig Biggio says lumping him with PED users “unfair”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"craigbiggio\"<\/p>\n

Despite receiving the highest percentage of votes, Craig Biggio was not elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Biggio believes his snubbing at the hands of baseball writers has a lot to do with other stars who used performance-enhancing drugs.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s kind of unfair, but it’s the reality of the era that we played in,” Biggio said<\/a>. “Obviously some guys are guilty and others aren’t, and it’s painful for the ones that weren’t.”<\/p>\n

There were numerous reasons to vote for Biggio. He had 3,000 career hits, played premium defense at three positions and was a class act in Houston and beyond.<\/p>\n

\"Craig
Craig Biggio received 68.2% of the vote in his first try on the Hall of Fame ballot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Still Biggio fell 39 votes short after appearing on 68.2% of Hall of Fame ballots. Players are required to appear on 75% of ballots in order to earn enshrinement in Cooperstown.<\/p>\n

Several ‘Steroid Era’ stars appeared on the ballot with Biggio including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa.<\/p>\n

“All I know is that I went out there and played the game and I loved the game and I went out there to win, and we have a lot of flags on that wall out there that represent that, and that’s really the most important thing to me,” he said.<\/p>\n

While Biggio believes he may also have been hurt by some writers refusal to vote for first ballot players he gave a bit of a hat tip to the the idea of the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

“You had a list of a lot of guys that were very qualified and nobody was let in. It just says a lot about how special that building really is.”<\/p>\n

Oddly, Biggio says he would also have voted for Bonds and Clemens citing them as the greatest he has ever seen.<\/p>\n

“Barry Bonds was the greatest hitter that I’ve ever played against … and Roger was one of the greatest pitchers of all time,” he said. “I would have yes, I think those guys are Hall of Fame players. Barry and Roger, their numbers speak for themselves and what they did on a baseball field speaks for itself.”<\/p>\n

Former teammate Jeff Bagwell shared Biggio’s disappointment.<\/p>\n

“That’s ridiculous. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s a travesty,” Bagwell said, according to tweets<\/a> by Mark Berman, sports director of Fox affiliate KRIV in Houston.<\/p>\n

It may be even more difficult for Biggio next season. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, Frank Thomas and Jeff Kent will all be added to the ballot next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite receiving the highest percentage of votes, Craig Biggio was not elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Biggio believes his snubbing at the hands of baseball writers has a lot to do with other stars who used performance-enhancing drugs. “I think it’s kind of unfair, but it’s the reality of the era that we played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}