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

What players have been kept out for having poor relations with the media? Jim Rice and Eddie Murray seemed to do OK. Steve Carlton and Ted Williams, too.

 

Albert Belle

 

That's a thing of beauty right there.

 

Belle and Dick Allen were the first two to come to mind. Both are deserving.

I will always love Kirby Puckett as a ballplayer, but it's really a shame he got in on what amounts to an injury/beloved exemption and Belle didn't.

Especially since it turned out that Puckett was probably a worse human being than Belle. If only Belle had smiled more.

 

Damn right about Belle. And Dick Allen.

 

Dick Allen didn't just have poor relations with the media, he had poor relations with everybody.

I'm sure a large part of it can be ascribed to his being an outspoken black man in a culture that wasn't ready for that, but Allen was a generally disagreeable guy. He was fined several times for showing up late (including once when he went to a horse race on the morning before a game), drank too much and most infamously "retired" with two weeks left in the 1974 season.

 

And Albert Belle didn't just have poor relations with the media, he had poor relations with Trick-or-Treaters.

 

Puckett was a top offensive sparkplug for two Twins' teams which pulled World Series upsets. Right or wrong, that may be the difference.

 

1,200 more plate appearances for Puckett, too.

That said, I am always shocked Belle didn't get more support.

 

While we're at it, Kevin Brown and Kenny Lofton were two jerks who should have gotten more support.

However, I didn't vote for either because I didn't think they were quite good enough, so it's hard to blame people for not voting for them.

Maybe everyone just saw them the same as me.

It's sort a weird argument to say "How come more people didn't disagree with me? I may not be right!"

 

The problem with guys like Lofton, Brown, and Harold Baines, among others, is that they are really close to the HOF line - but also very obviously (to most eyes) not HOFers. So they get vote totals that leave people scratching their heads: "How does Harold Baines only get 7 votes?!"

The notion is that if Tim Raines gets 50 percent, and he's, say, only 20 percent better than Kenny Lofton, then Lofton should get 40 percent of the vote. But that's not actually how it plays out in practice.

 

There are probably 20 guys who were worse players than Kenny Lofton who are in the Hall of Fame now, though most of them are among the most egregious Veterans Committee inductees.