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

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Doesn't help their cause either that they are viewed as real pricks, especially Bonds, by the voting population from their daily interactions, or lack thereof, during their playing career.

Probably a good number of voters will continue to leave them off the ballot as much for what they did in the locker room, rather than what they did on the field.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I can speak better to the NFL side of it, but a lot of those guys cover the league, even the negative sides of things, just as well and often better than the beat writers.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Isn't it also largely up to individual chapters, although I got the feeling that the MLB.com thing was organization-wide?

I know at least one city where they basically invent the membership rules as they go along to prevent someone they don't like from getting in, and allow people they like in.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000243632/article/concussion-issue-continues-to-grow-in-major-league-baseball

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I'm not trying to speak for Ken -- well, I guess I am -- but I am assuming his logic for not voting for anyone during the steroid era is not necessarily that he believes all players were using, but that he believes all players contributed to the game's unwillingness to stop steroid use.

Which is true, by the way. Tom Glavine in particular was one of the game's strongest voices in a union that resisted steroid testing for a decade.

Personally, I would not punish an entire generation, but if it's your decision to do so, I don't find any issue with concluding that Morris was not part of the guilty generation and Maddux/Glavine/Thomas were, even if they themselves were clean.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

On the MLB.com question, writers who work for MLB.com are not active members of the BBWAA (and thus do not vote for annual awards or receive BBWAA credentials). However, many of them worked previously at newspapers and gained Honorary membership (and lifetime HOF votes) that way.

If you are active for 10 consecutive years and then pay a fee to gain Honorary membership when you cease being active, you hold your HOF ballot for as long as you want. Certainly that means there are some voters who are disconnected from the game, but I believe it's a pretty small percentage.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Good to hear.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Glavine was quite the vocal union guy.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

"As for those who played during the period of PED use, I won't vote for any of them."

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Yeah, Glavine along with David Cone was very much the player face of the 1994-95 strike.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

So we can vote in Gary Sheffield but not Barry Bonds?

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

C'mon man. Do you know the "exact words" episode of the Brady Bunch?

You're playing silly word games if you think that the era Jack Morris pitched in was the same as the era Greg Maddux pitched in.

I seem to remember about 10 pages ago on this thread someone published a pro-Morris vote and said his 3.90 ERA could be explained by the fact that he pitched in the steroid era and that was (correctly) ridiculed, because Morris clearly pitched the vast majority of his career in the time before steroid use was rampant.