Clemens, Bonds and Sosa to Be Judged by Baseball Hall of Fame Voters When the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is distributed in November, it will be a who's who of baseball's steroids era. Appearing for the first time will be the names of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa, all of whom had sparkling careers that were tarnished by their highly publicized links to performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens was acquitted Monday of charges of lying to Congress when he testified that he had not used performance-enhancers. Bonds, in his federal perjury trial last year, was convicted on one count of misleading a grand jury that was investigating drug use by athletes. Sosa, in a New York Times article in June 2009, was identified as having tested positive in a 2003 drug test administered by Major League Baseball. Now all three await the verdict of hundreds of Hall of Fame voters, who have already responded with marked coolness to the ongoing candidacies of Mark McGwire, an admitted user of performance-enhancers, and Rafael Palmeiro, who tested positive for drug use. Of the 573 members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who cast ballots last year, only 112 (or 19.5 percent) voted for McGwire, in line with the meager totals he had drawn on previous ballots; and only 72 voted for Palmeiro (12.6 percent), mimicking the dismal support he got the previous year, his first time on the ballot. To be inducted, a former player must be named on 75 percent of the ballots. But what about Clemens? His denials that his former trainer Brian McNamee injected him with steroids and human growth hormone were viewed with widespread skepticism by baseball commentators, so it is unclear if Monday's acquittal will help his cause that much on the 2013 ballot. On that question, a quick sampling of potential voters revealed some differences of opinion that will undoubtedly play out in print and on Web sites as the balloting approaches. "It doesn't move me an inch," said Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports of the verdict. Whether or not the government could prove its case, it doesn't change the facts the way I see them. I won't vote for anyone I believe took steroids or performance-enhancers, and so I won't vote for Clemens. Peter Abraham of The Boston Globe said in an e-mail: "The verdict can only help Clemens, but it may not be enough. Voters have generally excluded those players tied to P.E.D. use, and it may not make a difference. Clemens faces an uphill road to Cooperstown. However, Buster Olney, ESPN's leading baseball voice, took a different view in an e-mail. I was already going to vote for Clemens, for the same reason that I have always voted for Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro: The institution of baseball condoned the use of performance-enhancing drugs for almost two decades with inaction. To hold it against a handful of individuals now is, to me, retroactive morality. Danny Knobler, a baseball columnist for CBS Sports, said he would not be particularly influenced by the verdict. The standard of proof is totally different, and should be. My opinion isn't putting him in jail, and my Hall of Fame vote is based only on whether I believe he should be honored as one of the game's all-time greats. Knobler indicated that he didn't think so. Tyler Kepner contributed reporting from Anaheim, Calif.