Reds legend Pete Rose announcement creates steroid question for Baseball Hall of Fame

There's no guarantee that Pete Rose is ever elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

But after his removal from the permanently ineligible list on Tuesday, he's officially in the running for a sacred spot in Cooperstown.

That news was met with considerable social media pushback, not simply because of Rose but because of the Hall of Fame's new-age flaw.

Baseball history can't be told without the Steroid Era.

Barry Bonds had a 73-homer season and hit 762 for his career. That happened.

Alex Rodriguez wound up with 696 home runs of his own and might be the most-talented shortstop ever. That happened.

Roger Clemens is the most dominant right-handed pitcher in baseball history. That happened.

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None of them are in the Hall of Fame. And unlike Rose, they've all been on the ballot. The voters have just opted to keep them out.

Given that, the fact that the Steroid Era stars have gotten votes, just not enough, it's a tougher thing to fix by a simple ruling.

But if Rose gets in via a veterans era kind of committee, it opens the door further. At that point, do the superstars of a whole era of baseball get left out?

It's a never-ending loop to try and determine who was using what and when, and what effect it may have had. Clearly, it was a difficult era in Major League Baseball.

Steroids may have saved MLB all the same, though, with the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa home run race. Neither of them are in the Hall of Fame as inducted players either, of course.

Maybe the committees never let Rose in. Maybe baseball history remains out of Cooperstown in both Rose's gambling mistakes and in the steroids that impacted so many games and careers.

But it's time to consider it all: If Rose makes the Hall of Fame, does A-Rod? Does Bonds? Do Clemens and McGwire and Sosa?

Because that time of reckoning has officially arrived.

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