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Bonds won a record seven Most Valuable Player awards while setting the career and single-season records for home runs, and Clemens won a record seven Cy Young Awards, and an M.V.P., while surpassing 300 victories and 4,000 strikeouts. But both players were strongly tied to steroid use and received well short of the necessary votes for election.

The Hall of Fame will induct three new members in Cooperstown, N.Y., this summer — the umpire Hank O'Day, the owner Jacob Ruppert and a catcher, Deacon White. All three died in the 1930s and were voted in by the veterans committee in December. As a result, baseball will hold its annual Hall of Fame ceremony next July in an awkward context — without a single living honoree on stage.

The highest vote this time around went to Craig Biggio, who received 388 votes and was named on 68.2 percent of the ballots cast. Biggio, a former Houston Astro who ended his career with 3,060 hits, fell 39 votes short of election. Bonds, meanwhile, was named on 36.2 percent of the ballots and Clemens on 37.6 percent.

Another star from the steroids era, Sammy Sosa, who slugged 609 home runs and was reported by The New York Times to have tested positive for steroids in 2003, finished far behind. He was named on 12.5 percent of the ballots.

Every player on the ballot was active in the era before steroid testing, which began, with penalties, in 2004. But some have escaped suspicion, like Biggio, who fared well in his ballot debut and is likely to be inducted in the next few years.

Others, like the former Mets catcher Mike Piazza and the former Houston first baseman Jeff Bagwell, were muscle-bound sluggers in an era when many such players were taking steroids. They are viewed skeptically by some but have never been linked to performance-enhancing drugs, and both got more votes than Bonds and Clemens: 59.6 percent for Bagwell and 57.8 percent for Piazza in his first time on the ballot.

The player with the second highest percentage was Jack Morris, the former ace of the Detroit Tigers, the Minnesota Twins and the Toronto Blue Jays. He received 67.7 percent. It was the 14th appearance on the ballot for Morris, who has one more year of eligibility on the writers' ballot and faces a crowded field of candidates next year.

In addition to Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and the other holdovers, voters will consider a strong class of newcomers, including Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Mike Mussina and Jeff Kent. All will be on the ballot that writers will receive in December 2013. Writers can vote for no more than 10 candidates.

Other top players who fell short of election Wednesday were Tim Raines (52.2 percent), Lee Smith (47.8 percent), Curt Schilling (38.8 percent, in his first time on the ballot) and Edgar Martinez (35.9 percent). Two members of the 500 home run club — Mark McGwire, an admitted steroid user, and Rafael Palmeiro, who failed a test in 2005 — received less than 20 percent of the vote.