Why Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will get the Hall call

— -- Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. What a cute Hall of Fame induction day couple they're going to make. Feel free to imagine what that day will look like -- because guess what? Barry and the Rocket are going to get elected.

Sorry, I can't tell you what year. But what the 2017 vote totals told us was as clear as an undetectable steroid: This is happening.

Clemens has made it all the way up to 54.1 percent of the vote. Bonds was one vote behind him, at 53.8 percent. And you know what's lurking just over the horizon when Hall of Fame candidates start collecting more than half of all the votes cast? The chiseling of their plaques.

How do we know that's where this is heading? Here is how:

They're over 50 percent

It's true that not everyone in history who cracked the 50 percent barrier got elected to the Hall of Fame by the writers. Since 1969, the first year of the modern voting system, seven players have actually failed to do that.

Here's that list: Gil Hodges, Enos Slaughter, Nellie Fox, Jim Bunning, Orlando Cepeda, Jack Morris and the latest addition, Lee Smith, who fell off the ballot after this year's vote in his 15th and final spin.

Slaughter, Fox, Bunning and Cepeda eventually got to Cooperstown, elected later by the Veterans Committee. Let's just say that doesn't look like a promising fallback position for Bonds and Clemens at the moment. But who knows how future permutations of the Veterans Committee will look back on this era? The world is changing really quickly.

But we don't need to think too deeply about the Veterans Committee right now because Bonds and Clemens fit into two way more promising categories.

Zero to 50 in five years

Pay attention because this is important. Most of the names on that list above don't bear much resemblance to the cases of Bonds and Clemens. Why? It took most of that list a lonnngggg time to get over the 50 percent threshold. Barry and Roger got there in their fifth lap around the track.

Here's why that's a big deal: In the past 40 years, 26 other players made it to 50 percent or beyond within their first five years on the ballot. Four of them -- Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman -- are still in voting circulation, so we'll put them aside. Guess what the other 22 all had in common.

You've got it. All 22 of them got elected. By the Baseball Writers' Association.