Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Released

shot - you make a great argument why to use the "any reasonable person" approach.

i think you pulled the number of other HOFers already in as five ... name them. in fact, name one. you can't.

on the other hand, mcgwire does have steriods stamped on his head.

plenty of us speed while traveling the interstates to and from games, only those of us who get pulled over receive tickets. mcgwire's been ticketed, plain and simple. he should pay the fine, including court costs.

 

buck - obviously you know where i stand on the whole pete rose issue, eh? (the "eh" was inserted for my canadian friends)

and, may i ask buck, have you been to cooperstown and the hall?

 

I have, indeed. Four times: '88, '89, '91, 'and '96.

Fifth time comes in '07 for Ripken.

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Here's where I stand on Pete: He has a lifetime ban. When his life is over, he can be eligible for the Hall.

Same goes for Joe Jackson. His lifetime ban ends when his life did -- he's been punished enough. Let him in.

Can't have a legit Hall of Fame without Joe or Pete. I'm sorry, but they're two of the all-time greats. Put an asterisk on their plaques -- but you have to put them in.

 

Best line ever posted on a baseball thread.

 

i had to ask if you'd been because if you hadn't, this would probably come off as sounding extremely corny, but here goes: for me, cooperstown is the last remaining piece of what's "good and pure" about the game of baseball other than classic sports network.

i don't want rose nor mcgwire in "my hall" because they'd both cast a shadow over what the place represents. and, using the "any reasonable person" approach: rose out, mcgwire out, jackson in.

also, the hall isn't fucked up because mlb doesn't run the place.

 

Totally agree. I'm a "Field of Dreams" kind of baseball guy ... by that I mean, my motto is: "There are two kinds of people -- those who like 'Field of Dreams' and those who don't have a heart."

It's been 10 years ... and a long fucking 10 years ... since I've been to Cooperstown. But it's still one of my favorite places in the world.

My problem with that logic is this: Travis Jackson is in the Hall. Gary Garter is in the Hall. Jesse Haines is in the Hall. Candy Cummings is in the Hall. Chick Hafey is in the Hall. Dizzy Dean (with 150 career wins, and only six full seasons) is in the Hall.

If Bonds or Rose or Jackson (I don't include McGwire, because I don't think he was a HOFer on merit, let alone entering the steroids debate) ... if you're arguing that Bonds/Rose/Jackson, three of the greatest players ever, "cast more shadows" over what the Hall of Fame represents than the very-good-but-nowhere-close-to-HOF players that I listed above, then I have a hard time taking that argument seriously.

The Hall is already flawed enough because of years of corruption -- keeping Rose out doesn't help it regain some kind of moral credibility, and I don't think the Hall of Fame should be the place for moral credibility anyway. It should be the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, just like it says on the sign in front of the big brick building that I loved so much as a kid (and still do now, like a kid.)

"My kind of Hall" is where the greatest players should be -- Bonds and Rose and Jackson are included in that. With a question mark, with an asterisk, with *something*, to note their suspicious behavior, certainly ... but they have to be in. They earned it on the field. If they cheated, or they were banned, or they gambled, then note that. But don't keep them out because of it.

Because if you're going to have a Hall of Fame with Gaylord Perry -- who also earned it on the field -- then you can't argue that Barry Bonds should be out. If you have a Hall with Cobb and Speaker -- who also bet on their teams -- then you can't argue that Joe or Pete should be out. ... The off-the-field stuff will be handled by their biographers and the historians, and their legacies. I believe in karmic justice. They're serving their sentences, trust me, especially in the court of public opinion.

But the Hall of Fame is the Hall of Fame: Put the greatest players in the Hall of Fame. Period.

 

i guess that's just a difference between us buck. while in cooperstown, i can look at gary carter's plaque and wonder what possessed 75 percent of any crowd to place a checkmark next to his name. does he belong there? probably not, but at least he didn't piss all over the game of baseball the way pete rose and mark mcgwire did.

part of the criteria of entering such hallowed ground is based on the following line, "Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played," and has been since 1936.

the fine folks who created the hall believed those standards should be in place before a person entered the hall of fame they created to honor baseball's best.

i guess they believed a man who pisses all over the game, the same sport that made his name known to us, shouldn't deserve the honor of being in their hall ... which plays a huge role in what i believe makes the hall and that fine village in upstate new york quite possibly the best place on the face of the earth -- not counting the entire country of greece, of course.

a reasonable person should be able to infer both rose and mcgwire pissed on the game, therefore, i don't want those fuckers in "my hall."


btw - i think you might have missed the point where i said a reasonable person would include jackson in the hof.

btwII - just finished my last book and was getting ready to crack open another. looking at the ginger kid -- as i'm sure you know, is a book on buck weaver. is it worth investing a week of my life on this read?

 

Ginger Kid is a little dry for my tastes (one day, I hope to write a better one, complete with postscript of Buck's reinstatement ) but it's worth a read if you're interested in Weaver -- and just Weaver. Very detailed, and very narrowly focused ... not that I mind, of course, because I'm passionate about the whole B-Sox story and really dig all that stuff.

One thing, though: Because of our age differences -- he did most of his research before I was born -- Irv Stein was able to talk to a lot of people in Pottstown (Buck's hometown) that aren't around for me to meet. He got some crazy-good details about Buck's background and history that just aren't available to a researcher like me, coming of age when I have. He talked to family members and people that knew Buck ... there aren't many of those left now, needless to say. And that's an important part of what makes The Ginger Kid a good read (although, as I said, it's a little dry. I'm not a fan at all of Irv Stein's writing style in that book. But his research was top-notch, and I can certainly appreciate that.)

I do have the advantage of technology, though -- I've been able to dig up stuff from the Internet and restored newspaper archives that Irv Stein would have never had access to when he was writing Ginger Kid. But he's got me beat on the interviews, scrapbooks, etc. ... credit where it's due, for sure.

It's a real quick read, too; give it a whirl.

 

what the fine mr. steele doesn't get is the hall of fame isn't "baseball."

his column is a ridiculous diatribe. making someone else pay for mlb's sins is asinine at best.

i'd venture to guess mr. steele is under the assumption mlb runs the place ... if he does know that fact, i hope he serves a jail sentence for a crime his 16-year-old commits while on a drunken rampage.

 

And that's why I feel he doesn't belong.

If I were a voter trying to take the high road in an attempt to justify his exclusion from Cooperstown, I would explain that if McGwire didn't care to talk about the past on Capitol Hill, then I don't care to vote for McGwire inclusion to the HOF based on his past numbers.