The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame is an iconic monument to the best players, managers, and executives to ever touch the sport. But some of the greatest players to grace the sport of baseball are not in the Hall of Fame, and it is not because people think they do not deserve it.

One of the most exciting eras in baseball was known as the “steroid era”, which ran from around 1990 to 2005. It brought fans back to baseball after many stopped paying attention to the sport following three labor strikes between 1980 and 1985. None of the strikes were longer than 50 days, but all three hurt the relationship between the players and owners.

This era had more offense and home runs than ever before, which brought fans back into the fold. However, since the era has ended, many players from that time have admitted that they took steroids during that time, despite steroids being a banned substance since 1991. 10 batters from the steroid era ended their careers with more than 500 home runs, and six of them have admitted using steroids or been suspected of it. None of those six are in the Hall of Fame, even though their careers are worthy of getting inducted.

The main issue voters have with these players is that they used steroids. Without that, they would easily be in the Hall of Fame. However, voters feel that steroids tainted the legacy of those players and calls into question their performance on the field.

The issue with saying that players took steroids is that it is not known if they used them unless they have admitted it since then. Major League Baseball did not start testing players for steroids until 2005, so that makes it hard to know which players took steroids between 1991 and 2005. The players with the best chance of making the Hall of Fame who have admitted using steroids are Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, and Jose Canseco. These players, and any others who admitted using steroids, should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. But for anyone else, it is mostly speculation on whether they used steroids.

One of two caveats to that is if players were suspended for performance enhancing drugs, then they should also not be allowed into the Hall of Fame because it is known that the players used performance enhancing drugs at one point. That would disqualify players like Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro.

The second caveat is if the player was named in the “Report to The Commissioner of Baseball of An Independent Investigation into The Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball,” otherwise known as the Mitchell Report. The Mitchell Report was an investigation by then-Senator George Mitchell that investigated allegations that Major League Baseball players used steroids and human growth hormone. 89 Major League Baseball players were named in the Mitchell Report, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Eric Gagne. However, not all the players who were named have positively taken steroids, but given the context, most of them probably have.

While that would eliminate many of the top players from the steroid era from being inducted into the Hall of Fame, there are still many others who would have a better case because they did not use steroids, including Jeff Kent, Carlos Delgado, and Andruw Jones. Kent and Jones are on the Hall of Fame ballot this year, and while Jones had a much better first half of his career than the second half, he has a good case for being inducted into the Hall of Fame. It is possible that there are plenty of players who used steroids that are not known at this time. But using what the public knows is all that is available to help decide.