Maddux, Glavine, Thomas elected to Baseball Hall of Fame; Biggio just misses

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

That's just a really sad ballot. But some people get off on their chances to play God, even if it's just in the sandbox.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Scroll down in that link further and you have Marty Noble with a Glavine, Maddux, Morris ballot because he hates long ceremonies.

"I don't want 28 people entering the Hall at once, so I limited my checks on the ballot to three. That ought to be enough to go along with the three managers. Angst returns next year."

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I think that's being really hard on some of the voters. There are exceptions from your generation - guys in their 50s and 60s - who think about PEDs in a different light. But it is pretty ingrained in people who grew up watching East German swimmers and Ben Johnson that steroids are the devil. That's not easy to disengage from.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Ken Gurnick is about to be on MLB Network radio on Sirius XM with Jim Bowden and Casey Stern. They raked Murray Chass over the coals yesterday, so I'm looking forward to it.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

With 24 hours to go, Piazza is all but done and Biggio's gonna struggle to cross 75 percent. They lost two percent in the mlb.com ballot dump.

Nearly a third of the voters are know, still averaging nine players per ballot, and yet only three are in. And the logjam continues.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Gurnick just said this is his last ballot -- he will abstain from future votes

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

If I had been one of the hosts, my reaction would have been "good."

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Ken Gurnick's ballot is a great example off which to suggest voters should not hold their vote like Supreme Court justices.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Ken Gurnick -- no one ever heard of him before yesterday, now known as a joke.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I've heard some people say --- maybe on this thread, I'm not going to dig back thru the whole thing --- that turning in a blank ballot is the equivalent of a protest vote in a general election. But I think that's a false equivalency.

To me, it's more like a member of Congress voting. American citizens have the right to vote on important issues, members of Congress have the privilege based on their job responsibilities.

And just like in Congress, a member who abstains and/or votes "present" on a number of important issues is doing a disservice to his constituents and will eventually be voted out of office.

As it should be with members of the BBWAA. Members who abuse their voting privileges should lose them because they are doing a disservice to the fans.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

If Greg Maddux played in steroid era, so did Jack Morris. Their careers overlapped by almost a decade. Plus Morris pitched to McGwire and Frank Thomas and Sosa ...

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Dick Whitman, if a voter is so appalled by PED use he can't bring himself to vote for anyone, guilty, suspected or none of the above, (except Morris, which is obviously a hobbyhorse vote), then the voter is so repulsed by baseball they really have no ethical alternative than to resign from the organization.