2013 MLB Hall of Fame Screechfest

No, I know. Like I said, if there was a player to put on the left side of the scale, it would probably be Eckstein. Or Punto. Someone of that ilk.

I was just saying Neifi Perez is one of those players, too. But he juiced. That means they all could have juiced. The difference between me and the moralizers, though, is I don't care if they juiced. I never stopped liking baseball, but I'm probably in the minority. People came back because they wanted to see people sock some dingers. And PED use accomplished that. Seems unfair to punish them after the fact after writers looked the other way for a decade.

 

As an aside: Who popped the top off the "WE MUST PUNISH THE STEROID USERS!!!!" bottle? Was it Lupica? I bet it was Lupica.

 

The IOC.

 

The IOC always has punished known juicers. I meant in the journalism world, baseball-specific.

 

Except that the "Hollywood Foreign Press" has virtually nothing to do with the actual press.

 

Do you believe McGwire would be HOF material if he never juiced?

 

Also: The Veterans Committee elects Hall of Famers, and consists of former players, along with Tom Verducci. And it does a legendarily poor job electing players. Most of the worst Hall of Fame selections of all-time came out of the Veterans Committee.

A few months ago, someone wrote - either here or in a real publication - that one big reason that players would do a bad job voting for awards isn't because they don't know the game, but because they don't pay attention. Not like media members do. They know about Justin Verlander's stuff. They know the scouting report on him. But they probably don't know the particulars of the season he's having.

Another reason having them vote for the HOF is a bad idea: Everyone would get in. Everyone.

 

I can only answer with what he did on the field, not what he might have done if he had or hadn't done this or that. But if you're putting a gun to my head: I don't know. How much more effective did steroid use make pitchers?

I'm also probably the wrong person to ask about McGwire. I think Sosa was a better player than him. At least Sosa had speed and a cannon arm on his resume. McGwire just had the bat.

 

Perhaps we should stop caring so much about the Hall of Fame. Not just this one. But all of them. And awards, too. Academy Awards. Grammys. APSEs.

I'm as bad as anybody about obsessing over things like this. I understand the need to sort actors and rank accomplishments. But at some point, it's just a construct we've imposed on these things, nothing more.

I love reading New York Times movie reviews because they don't dole out stars. It must be a very liberating way to review a film. It's definitely a liberating - and more challenging - way to read about them.

 

The more the HOFs keep out people who clearly belong--Bonds, Clemens, Biggio, Chris Carter, KISS, Rush (rectified finally) to name a few, the less relevant they will become in the public eye. So you could have a self fulfilling prophecy situation down the road.

 

How is second base not demanding? You are still turning double plays, making relay throws, getting the ball hit to you...

If I had a terrible fielder, I would stick them at first or left, not second.

 

Someone mentioned it on this thread, and it makes sense: Fans don't need the Hall of Fame any more the way they used. Not in the days of Baseball-Reference.com. The beginning of the end of its relevance as judge and jury probably came in around 1968, when the first Baseball Encyclopedia was published. Suddenly, judgments weren't coming down from Mount Olympus, where only the Council of Elders had access to the relevant information. Now, anyone could make their own evaluations, upon the same information.