Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Released

Exactly. Shotty points this out every time, and I agree with him every time.

If he's not a Hall of Famer, he's not. First ballot, last ballot, every ballot in between.

Frankly, I don't think McGwire is a Hall of Famer -- and it has nothing to do with steroids.

He had five HOF years: 1987, 1996, '97, '98 and '99. Pretty good years in '88 and '92. But in between, he was below-average -- not average. Below average.

He was a terrible hitter, although he had some pop and drove in plenty of runs because he played for a great team, but not a very good fielder, and he wasn't much good running the bases. There was nothing that he did so well for anyone to say, "I want him on my team," during any other year of his career besides those listed above. And even then, he was pretty one-dimensional (granted, he was the biggest threat in the game during that '96-'99 stretch, but still one-dimensional.)

Not a Hall of Famer in my book, steroids or no.

 

Should there be a cap on the number of HOF inductees each year? That also means there should be at least one person every year.

 

I can categorically state that Bert Blyleven never took steroids.

Vote Bert.

 

The second there's a cap, then this whole shit about "first-ballot induction" being such a great honor should wash away. Because if you happen to come up in a year like this -- with Ripken and Gwynn -- you are positively screwed.

As it is, the 75% standard keeps more than enough players out every year. I don't think there's a need for a cap.

And if we are going to try to finally make HOF induction more stringent, all these years later, I think we just need to revamp the whole thing -- create a pyramid scheme (a pantheon, if you will), placing Ruth, Mays, Aaron, Cobb at the top and the Travis Jacksons and the Jesse Haines and the Gary Carters at the bottom. Rearrange the gallery in Cooperstown that way, and go off that. (And, IMHO, that would be a hella fun museum to visit -- start at the front with the superstars of their era and work your way up to the superstars of all time, separate rooms each time, 'til you reach the pantheon, and it's this glorious, gold-studded room with The Greatest Players of All Time, all together at last. Too cool.)

Or you could create a new HOF -- a separate wing -- and limit it to the top 100 players of all time. That's your pantheon. And if a Bonds or A-Rod or Pujols comes along in the future, you drop out whoever's last in line and put them back in the "regular" HOF: guys who deserve to be honored, but who don't quite make it into the pantheon.

Neither of those will ever happen.

 

Ditto. That's all I'm saying, Chris.

 

Major league copout.

Surprised that's MG typing that.

 

Buck

Fair enough. I see your point.

I hope you see my point as well.

There is a frustration out there among the fans that the reporters let people down. Who is supposed to speak out if not the reporters? The players let this happen because they were getting bigger and bigger contracts. The owners let it happen because drug testing wasn't a battle they wanted to fight and beside "chicks dig the longball." That - by default - left it to the reporters who like to raise up their voices on every other subject but never on steroids.

Now the same writers are saying that being the steroids police is not their job. The frustration is revisited. By definition the writers who have a vote have been covering baseball for at least 10-years. This happened on their watch. Now to turn a blind eye on the most obvious cheaters seems like just another betrayal. Or cowardice.

 

No disrespect Chris, but your argument is bullshit. Ten years ago, steroids wasn't the issue. Baseball was coming off of a strike that has angered and disillusioned its fan base. No one was thinking about steroids helping one-dimensional sluggers rewrite the record book.

You wrote that that the fans feel that the reporters let them down. What should newspapers have done? Looked into a crystal ball and forseen a problem with steroids? What should every beat reporter have done? Dismissed their day-to-day work to research steroids in baseball? Remember, steroids weren't against MLB's rules at the time.

Should someone have looked into the numbers that the Sosas and McGwires were compiling? Perhaps. But that's a long-term investigation that costs time and money. It wasn't the job of the beat reporter.

 

I see your point, Chris. But where do we draw the line?

"The most obvious cheaters"? Does that mean the Holy Quartet of Witchhunters -- Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Palmeiro? Just the players who got called before Congress (Bonds and Giambi weren't, but Schilling was.) What exactly does that mean?

Yes, there is a frustration among fans that reporters let people down. But there is (or was) a bigger frustration that baseball let people down. And that's where the fury should be directed.

 

Buck (and I call you Buck because it bugs the original Buck) - I would be happy with keeping the four you named out of the hall. I would also expect people to use forensic stats and other resources to figure it out. For example - Tejada was named by both Canseco and Palmeiro. Do you think that was coincidence?

 

Sounds a little subjective to me.

And no, I don't think it was coincedence that Tejada was named -- but who's to say any ol' Dutch Leonard with an axe to grind won't just smear a teammate without just cause?

I'm not saying "let's not use common sense", but I am saying it's not so black and white as to ... "keep the four out", like you say. Again: Where do we draw the line?

 

Here's the thing about common sense: It's not so common. We know that Canseco, Palmerio, Bonds and McGwire took 'roids. We suspect Tejada, Sosa and Clemens of taking. Where do the HOF writers draw the line? Does it become subjective?