3 Red Sox Legends Shut Out Of Baseball Hall Of Fame

BOSTON — Three all-time baseball greats with deep ties to the Boston Red Sox but burdened by complicated legacies once again fell short of the Hall of Fame. Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling and Manny Ramirez all were shut out of the Hall, which announced its newest entrants Tuesday evening.

Former Yankee great Derek Jeter was given the nod, falling one vote shy of joining teammate Mariano Rivera as baseball's only unanimous Hall selections. Larry Walker, a slugger who played for Montreal, Colorado and St. Louis, also made it.

Candidates need 75 percent of the vote to get into the Hall. Schilling got to 70 percent, Clemens 61 percent and Ramirez 28.2 percent. Schilling and Clemens have will have two more years on the ballot, and Schilling's trend bodes well for him getting in next year.

Clemens in particular is a no-doubt Hall of Famer in terms of numbers and impact on the game, but it's been a messy go for even the biggest names in recent years as steroids-era stars take the brunt of a cloudy stretch of baseball history. Barry Bonds, the all-time home run leader tied to performance-enhancing drugs, also fell short of the Hall Tuesday. Clemens was also implicated in the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

"The Rocket" pitched for Boston from 1984 to 1996, winning three Cy Young awards and an MVP award. Boston, famously thinking Clemens was in the "twilight" of his career, let him go only to watch the big righthander win four more Cy Youngs and, once he made it to the Yankees, two World Series rings.

Clemens finished with a record seven Cy Young awards, leading the league in earned-run average seven times and wins four times. His 4,672 strikeouts are third all-time and he twice struck out 20 batters in a game with the Sox.

Schilling, along with David Ortiz, are the faces of the 2004 World Series championship team that ended an 86-year title drought and transformed Boston sports. Despite the "Bloody Sock" game in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees, Schilling isn't remembered as fondly as Ortiz.

Schilling doesn't have any ties to PEDs, but his post-playing career has included the 38 Studios fiasco in Rhode Island and a slew of controversial political comments, one of which cost him his job at ESPN.

Ramirez was one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all-time, a dominating force during his six-year-plus stint in Boston. He hit 555 career home runs and made 12 All-Star Games, but retired after his second PED-related suspension.