7-time MVP Barry Bonds and 7-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens — both accused of using steroids for the past several years — would not be voted into the Hall of Fame on their first attempt, according to a survey of baseball writers conducted by the New York Times.

The newspaper surveyed 90 writers who do perennial Hall of Fame voting. Bonds received 59 percent, and Clemens 56 percent, of "yes" votes — neither percentage of which equals or surpasses the 75 percent necessary to reach Cooperstown.

“The problem is you don’t know who was on the stuff and who wasn’t,” the Toronto Sun's Mike Rutsey told the Times. “No doubt there will be players who have been on the juice who will or have been voted into the Hall of Fame. If we don’t have proof or heavy suspicion, we can’t hold it against other players. It may not be fair, but nothing in life is.”

The Philadelphia Daily News' Bill Conlin calls Bonds and Clemens the “Tainted Tandem," the Chicago Tribune's Paul Sullivan calls them “weasels” and the Detroit Free Press' Drew Sharp says the players are “pariahs.”

“I think these guys have stained the game, and I’m not in the mood to forgive and forget,” Hal Bock of The Associated Press told the Times. “I prefer everyone on a level playing field. Their actions changed that.”

Bonds, a free agent, has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to a grand jury about his alleged use of steroids. He has been suspected of using steroids for nearly a decade, and this past season passed Henry Aaron to become the all-time leader in home runs. He now has 762 homers.

Clemens, who has won 354 games, was cited in the Mitchell Report, released last week, as having used steroids given to him by his former trainer, Brian McNamee.

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The playing careers of Bonds and Clemens are both uncertain. Bonds is a free agent after playing for 15 years with the San Francisco Giants, and Clemens might finally retire for good after ending his "retirement" three straight years, with the Houston Astros and New York Yankees.

Thus, if neither plays again, they will be eligible for the Hall of Fame for the first time in 2013.

Jack O’Connell, the secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, told the Times he was undecided.

Said John Hickey of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Do I think they used steroids and human growth hormone? I do. But I don’t know it, and I can’t prove it. So they both get my vote.”

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The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Bill Livingston said he would go "by the evidence of my own eyes" and vote against Bonds and Clemens.

“Do we really want Barry Bonds standing up there in Cooperstown between Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson?” Richard Justice of The Houston Chronicle said. “I’m having trouble getting my mind around that notion."

Justice also told the Times that if Clemens used steroids for as long as he is being accused of, he would have less wins than the Detroit Tigers' Kenny Rogers.

“I love Kenny Rogers,” Justice said, “but he ain’t going to the Hall of Fame.”

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