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

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Don't they usually make the votes public? I seem to remember seeing lists of writers who didn't vote for Ripken and Ryan.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I think it's up to the individual voter. A lot of guys reveal them in their column or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it's voluntary.

It's certainly not released by voter the way they do with the AP poll.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

HoF induction in baseball still means something.
The same can't be said for football and basketball.
Baseball writers have done a good job, for the most part, maintaining the importance and gravity of induction.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Yeah, but you don't count because you're perfect.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I hope when Greg Maddux is inducted and when he's standing on the podium in Cooperstown in July he can somehow get over the crushing disappointment of getting 99 percent of the vote instead of 100 percent.

I think Willie Mays still cries himself to sleep.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Posanksi with a nice takedown of Ken Gurnick.

http://bit.ly/1dtJj3I

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

It's going to be more like 93 or 94 percent than 99, but I get your point.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I'm not sure what "cocaine" and "excessive alcohol" have to do with PEDs. A first-grader could tell you why it's apples to oranges.

Nice to see he took down someone, though. Still waiting on his Paterno takedown.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Give me a break Dick, there was more in there than that.

Also, we hear PED's and the integrity clause. Why isn't cocaine and speed held against players?

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Because cocaine is not a performance-enhancing drug. It was used as a recreational drug. Like I said, that's a distinction a first-grader would understand. But Posnanski, like all stat heads, fucking loves PEDs. Fucking LOVES them! So he falls into that argument.

I'm surprised he didn't tell us that Babe Ruth ate a lot of hot dogs.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I think one of the reasons this is such a big deal is because to most seamheads, Greg Maddux is the ultimate player, or at least the ultimate pitcher of the last 20-30 years. In the days of the longball, he'd be the pitcher who would come in and throw a 2-1 gem that would be over in less than two hours.

Maddux is a throwback. Lumping him with the beefed-up steroid era players is idiotic.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

You can't win for losing with these people, though, so long as you have a BBWAA badge around your neck.

For 29 pages, we've heard that no one is not suspect in the steroid era, including Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas, and Tom Glavine.

Now, as I referred to earlier by noting that Morris was around at the start of that era, he's a weird guy to hitch your wagon to. But it's his last year on the ballot. I think Gurnick's ballot was pretty flawed, but he seemed to have the guts to follow the logic a lot of people here endorsed prior to his ballot being published - that no one from that era is in the clear.