What If Derek Jeter & The Class Of 2020 Are Joined In 2021 By Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens & Curt Schilling?

The sports world received another dose of long-anticipated bad news this afternoon, when the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the 2020 Induction Weekend — which has been anticipated as the biggest event to ever hit Cooperstown from the moment Yankees icon Derek Jeter hit “post” on the 736-word retirement announcement he made on Facebook the morning of Feb. 12, 2014 — scheduled for July 24-27 has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This marks the first time since 1960 — the last time no one was elected — that there will be no Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown. The Class of 2020 will be honored alongside the Class of 2021, which is scheduled to be inducted on Sunday, July 26, 2021. It will be the first dual-class ceremony since 1949, when the 1948 and 1949 classes were inducted together.

Today’s news is obviously disappointing for the inductees and their families — Jeter was slated to be honored along with Larry Walker and a pair of Modern Baseball selections, former All-Star catcher Ted Simmons and late Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Marvin Miller — and an absolute crusher for the Hall of Fame and the Cooperstown-area economy, the latter of which is going to take a potentially irrecoverable blow during a summer without baseball tourism.

The crowd for year’s Hall of Fame Induction Sunday was expected to shatter the record of 80,000, set when Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. were inducted in 2007, and approach 100,000. That’s millions of dollars lost to the Mom & Pop stores dotting Cooperstown’s Main Street. 

And another key component of the upstate summertime economy disappeared for the season Mar. 17, when Cooperstown Dreams Park, which welcomes thousands of youth baseball teams per year, canceled its 2020 schedule.

But on yet another bleak day and night, let’s turn our gaze to a hopeful what if — as in, what if Hall of Fame Weekend 2021 ends up being an even bigger and more historic celebration than the one Cooperstown wanted to host in 2020?

In other words: How does Jeter and Co. being joined on stage by a Class of 2021 of Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens sound?

A lot — A LOT — has to go right for this dream scenario to come together, starting with the coronavirus being corraled enough so that people once again feel comfortable hanging out with 75,000 or more of their fellow humans. The economy needs to bounce back a little bit — or at least avoid sinking into another Great Depression — for fans to feel they can justify an expensive trip (the total bill for four nights in a chain hotel in Utica, more than an hour away from Cooperstown, this year would have been more than $1,000).

And then, of course, Schilling, Bonds and Clemens all have to be get at least 75 percent of the vote from the writers when ballots are distributed in December. Schilling received 70 percent of the vote this year, which normally all but assures eventual enshrinement for a candidate with remaining eligibility. But as we wrote earlier this year, Schilling’s Hall hopes likely rest on his ability to stay out of trouble on social media during an election year that has grown far more contentious since when we wrote those words way back in the halcyon days of January.

With seven MVP awards and seven Cy Young Awards, respectively, Bonds and Clemens are at the top of any short list debating the best hitters and pitchers of all-time. But their credible ties to late-career PED usage have left them with a lot of ground to make up — Clemens got 61 percent of the vote this year while Bonds received 60.7 percent — and only two years to make it up.

But…the ballot does open for Bonds and Clemens this year, when the best first-year candidates are Tim Hudson, Mark Buehrle and Torii Hunter (OK, fine, and you too Dan Haren) and there are no candidates such as Walker or Edgar Martinez making a last-ditch surge? Clemens and Bonds probably need the two years to get the extra votes they need. But what if enough fo the electorate has been waiting for the more open ballot to finally decide the two have done their penance and sweat long enough?

So many narratives. Would the stage featuring these 2020-21 honorees form the most distinguished and eclectic Induction Day stage in Hall of Fame history? Jeter, Walker, Simmons, Schilling, Bonds and Clemens combined for 575.8 WAR at Baseball-Reference.com and were named to 58 All-Star teams. The sextet combined for 11,180 hits and 1,653 homers as hitters and 570 wins and 7,778 strikeouts as pitchers. Nobody did more to ensure these six players, and the rest of their peers, would be compensated generously for their gifts than Miller.

How many thousands of words would be written comparing and contrasting Jeter, the smooth-talking, trouble-free icon who didn’t commit a single memorable misstep in 19 seasons as the Yankees’ shortstop — with the controversial trio of Schilling, Bonds and Clemens? Would the election of Bonds and Clemens inspire further attempts to examine and put into context the steroid era? How would the Hall of Fame, always eager to present the game in the most positive of lights — in 2007, when Bonds was fewer than three weeks away from breaking the all-time home run record, reporters were reminded to keep their questions for Gwynn and Ripken centered only on their careers and the weekend — handle a weekend with Bonds and Clemens as two of the main attractions?

Jeter, Schilling and Clemens represent some of the greatest moments in a Red Sox-Yankees rivalry that is the best in pro sports. Schilling has often credited Clemens for delivering the stern talking to that helped a long-haired rebel turn his career around.

Then there’s the additional depth waiting a year to be enshrined will add to the compelling tales of Walker, Simmons and Miller, whose paths to Cooperstown were already amongst the most circuitous in history even before their inductions were delayed by the worst pandemic in more than a century.

Walker, the first player to be enshrined with a Rockies hat, made it in his 10th and final year of eligibility and after an unprecedented late surge. He received fewer than 12 percent of the vote in 2015 and just 34.1 percent of the vote in 2018. Simmons retired following the 1988 season and went one-and-done on the writer’s ballot in 1994. Miller made it on his eighth try on a veterans committee-type ballot, seven years after his death and 11 years after he declared he had no interest in being elected.

And how many people would descend upon Cooperstown, if the public health risk is minimal and people can afford to travel again, to see such a storied Induction Suday? Neither Bonds nor Clemens engendered the kind of warm and fuzzy feelings showered upon Jeter throughout the country. But Giants fans love Bonds and their their favorite franchise hasn’t had a player enshrined since Orlando Cepeda was elected via the Veterans Committee in 1999 and hasn’t had a player elected by the writers since Gaylord Perry in 1991. Giants fans might travel as enthusiastically as Mariners fans traveled last summer for Martinez.

Clemens’ famously mercenary ways and Schilling’s forked tongue mean they are more tolerated than loved even by many of the fans of the teams for whom they fared best. But Clemens still lives in Houston, whose fans turned out in droves for the inductions of Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell, and spent most of his career in Boston or New York, both within a day’s driving distance of Cooperstown. Schilling opened and closed his Hall of Fame candidacy on the east coast in Philadelphia and Boston and is a sporting icon in Arizona for helping the Diamondbacks to the state’s lone pro sports title. 

Plus, you know, how often do you get to see a generation’s winningest player, greatest hitter and most dominant pitcher share a single stage together?

What better way to celebrate the game — imperfections and all — and a nation trying to come back from an unprecedented setback than with the greatest Induction Sunday ever? On yet another day and night filled with more bad news, what better time to dream of the biggest party in Cooperstown history not being canceled, just delayed until it can be bigger and better than anyone could have imagined?