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Baseball Writers on Hall of Fame: “Get off my lawn!”

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The baseball hall of fame is one of those things that’s mythical and magical before you are old/interested enough to learn about the real nuts and bolts of it, kind of like Santa Clause or clowns. Once you learn the gory details though, it just becomes a joke and a source of frustration. For the first, and perhaps the most glaring problem, see the voter qualification process — number two on this page.

“That makes perfect sense!” you say. And yes, on the surface it does. Why wouldn’t at least ten years of active baseball writing be required to vote on the hall of fame? The problem is that those ten years could’ve come sixty years ago, and you’d still have a vote. Beat writers switch sports and jobs (and get fired) all the time, so ten years of baseball writing (at any time), while a perfectly reasonable starting benchmark, brings in far less than the most informed, best and brightest writers.

The problem runs far deeper though. If you’ve ever read a sports page, you know that even active, day to day beat writers are often total morons. I won’t name any names in the Philly baseball scene other than to say my personal reading list went from one to zero when David Hale left his Philly job for ESPN.

Now you might be thinking that idiots get to vote for things all the time. Very true. We did elect George W Bush… twice. And far be it from me to qualify myself as an expert on sports, although I have followed them and read voraciously about them my entire adult life. Of course voters will have different opinion of who should and should not get in based on statistical merit. That’s the whole fun of the thing. Even when the writers “get one wrong,” they are still likely voting in a very good to great player.

No, my problem comes with the newly (?) formed cabal of morality police, who take the stance as judge, jury, and executioner of character, statistics and evidence be damned. This year, both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were on the ballot for the first time. You might remember them from this perjury trial, this one, this congressional hearing on steroids, or the famous Mitchell Report, an independent investigation conducted by a US Senator. You might also remember them as two transcendent superstars so much better than their peers that they made domination look effortless. They did not make the hall, nor did they come particularly close, each coming in at around 36% of the required 75% of votes. I’m not necessarily arguing that those two should make it. Personally, I think they should, but at least the writers who whine and snipe at them have some evidence to turn to.

Sports, especially baseball, though, have a long and intertwined history with drugs of all sorts. Baseball, for example, had an amphetamine “epidemic” long before “the cream” and “the clear” were a glint in BALCO’s eyes. Tons of guys from that era are in the hall of fame. Tons of current voters happily voted for them. In fact, Pete Rose is probably the only true great from the “greenie” era not to be voted in, and that’s because he bet on his own damn team. And tell me how many NFL players would be suspended if HGH and steroids were properly tested for? They wouldn’t have a damn league. There’s a reason they are dragging their asses on HGH testing, after all. Yet we still eat it up every Sunday, the same way we ate up watching a roided Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire chase baseball’s home run record.

I guess there are conflicting points there, one being that it’s hypocritical for writers shun those on whom they made their living, happily silent about steroids, for years, another that if you are going to judge based on drugs the hall would be practically empty, and finally that if you MUST judge people on things other than their performance compared to that of their peers, you should at least have some evidence other than “well, his arms got bigger.”

That last one is where the morality police really irk me, and what I think players up for vote should be (and probably are) righteously pissed about. Prior to the recent voter faceplant, the best hitter at -insert position- ever would easily be voted in on the first ballot. This year, nobody got voted in, and Mike Piazza, easily the greatest hitting catcher of all time, was one of the victims of the stupidity. There is no evidence that he used PEDs — he just played in the wrong era. Jeff Bagwell, not the greatest hitting first baseman ever but easily one of the best of his generation (another usual sure thing for induction), was also left out. Again, no evidence of wrongdoing but conjecture. Yeah he got bigger in his twenties, and so does just about anyone who spends a little time in a gym, let alone makes a career out of it. Piazza is an obvious sure thing, and Bagwell was one of my all-time favorites growing up, so it’s easy for me to make a case for them.

Craig Biggio is another interesting case. He was kind of a skinny guy, so it’d be hard to obviously connect him to steroids. He easily qualified for induction based on his numbers, but for some reason he didn’t make it. Personally, I don’t care about that one, and let me tell you why — for this act, I’ll be playing the role of “disgruntled baseball writer/me.” I hated his stupid fucking face. He was one of the most annoying players I’ve ever watched, mostly because he always did well against my Phillies. He was always good but never great, he just stuck around a long time. Did I mention that I hate his stupid face?

Get off your damned high horse baseball writers, or your voting methods will keep looking as stupid and subjective as mine in that last paragraph. Stop sending in blank ballots and writing asinine columns about it. First, that only hurts the guys you do feel are deserving (assuming there’s at least one), and second, it’s objectively a stupid way to protest. Just don’t send your ballot at all, at least that doesn’t mess up the — you guessed it, objectively stupid — voting process. Stop writing anti-SABR columns if you don’t bother to read up on advanced statistics. Sure, some stats guys can be jackasses about it, but it doesn’t make you look any better responding in kind. Plus they are usually right. And for God’s sake, stop writing, period, if all you’re capable of is firing up the cliché machine and writing wretched, pissy columns about a sport so many love.


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