Hall Of Fame Vote

When all of baseball's authorities are raking in record profits and looking the other way and not punishing steroid use until external political pressure forced the issue by 2004, and nearly all of your contemporaries are doing it too, that's not an "unfair" advantage. That's playing the game that's played by the de facto rules of your era. After comprehensive and mandatory and universal testing and punishment is enacted, by all means get on the high horse about "unfair" advantages, but not a second before.

The PED players created their own advantage...not that I am opposed to that, but the players in the white only days did not directly create that environment.

"Yes, white players like Cap Anson benefited from not having African-American opponents. However, it didn't give him or any other players any advantages over their opponents on the field. That's a big difference. Players who used PED's did gain such an advantage, regardless if many others were doing the same".

Josh Gibson, Satchell, Turkey STearns...etc ...not getting to play is a massive deflator of both the statistical , and frankly moral, legitimacy of Anson's HOF case . In fact it blows it completely out of the water. Bonds and Clemens were first ballot inner circle HOFers before they used a single PED laden syringe while 80%+ of their contemporaries did the same thing. It's truly apples and oranges.

Bonds and Clemens, no doubter HOFers, Cap Anson, asshole and a much lesser player to boot.

The only interesting question about Bonds and Clemens is whether they are the greatest hitter and pitcher of all time. They both have legitimate cases there, Bonds particularly.

Cap Anson absolutely contributed to his environment. He argued against integration his entire career.

When all of baseball's authorities are raking in record profits and looking the other way and not punishing steroid use until external political pressure forced the issue by 2004, and nearly all of your contemporaries are doing it too, that's not an "unfair" advantage.

You keep saying nearly all players in the steroids era took steroids without any proof of that. Numerous players have testified to having not taken steroids and/or spoken out against them, like Frank Thomas did. Many players during that era did not show dramatic spikes in their production indicative of PED usage. So, the steroids users did give themselves an unfair advantage over non-using steroid players. They weren't following "de facto rules;" they were cheating and have no place in the HOF.


P.s. When you grouse about someone's "high horse," you are getting on a high horse yourself. I'm surprised that irony eluded you.

Josh Gibson, Satchell, Turkey STearns...etc ...not getting to play is a massive deflator of both the statistical , and frankly moral, legitimacy of Anson's HOF case .

Again, who didn't get to play gave Anson no advantage over the players whom he did play against. End of story.

And his being an a--hole or a racist doesn't matter either. There is a character clause in the HOF, not a personality clause.

Wait, so the white players benefited from not playing Negro League players, doesn't it follow that Negro League players benefited by not playing against the white players? Both MLB and Negro League players played in diluted leagues.


Is Cap Anson being the example symbolic of the white players of the era? While his name does not come to mind when I think of the greats of the game, he was a pretty dominant player for his time, when you have guys like Rabbit Maranville who played in the segregationist era, played in a non-dead ball era, and was a miserable (by Hall standards) hitter.

Turtle: No I'm not citing Anson as a "symbol of the white players of the era", his views were particularly odious, although there were certainly many others who shared them. And I brought him up less to trash his statistical HOF case than to demonstrate that the current voter crusade against modern players, guilty innocent suspected and otherwise, seems like highly selective, inconsistent moralism to me. His "sins" dwarf those of the PED pariahs in my view. But it is also true that players of his era, and really all players pre full integration, are highly overrepresented in the HOF due to the diluted competitive conditions. That's a separate point, but a point I believe in too.

Jose Canseco estimated that 85% of players used roids, and for all of his bombast and odious personality traits, most of his claims in his book about suspected individuals were later proven true. Caminiti put the number at 50%, David Wells at 25-40%. Reasonable extrapolations from the Mitchell report's 50+ nailed by 1-2 snitches or sources puts the number at about Canseco's reporting. I can't provide an exact number, but the number was very high, very significant, at least prior to comprehensive testing + penalties were enacted in 2004. Even as recently as last year, 140 players were surveyed and on average estimated that about 10% of players were still using steroids.

Instead of just complaining about the HOF, I have some proposed reforms of it.

1. The primary problem is that the voting pool is dominated by baseball journalists, who are neither qualified nor incentivized to identify the truly greatest players in baseball history. They are qualified to gather information, to write about it, to report news. They are not trained to evaluate statistical accomplisments like professional sabrmetricians, GMs, and even scouts are.

Journalists have an inherent conflict of interest: their livelihood depends on cultivating sources for scoops and information, and the voting patterns reflect their rewarding of media darlings and punishment of "surly" or introverted player personalities. Retired GMS, professional sabrmetricians, retired scouts don't have the conflict of interest that journalists do, and are more qualified to opine accurately on who the best players in baseball history are.

And if you are going to include journalists in the voting pool in some reduced fashion, it should be required that they actually cover baseball, or have, in the recent past. Keeping old timers who don't even have computers or email, or haven't read Bill James for example, is absolute folly.

2. Artificial limits against voting for more than 10 guys, or against inducting more than 10 at a time, need to be abolished. Some player pools may have 0 worthy players, others may have a few, others still may have 10+. There is no reason at all to limit the number of players who can be inducted at any one time.

3. Cop-out rules that allow the voters to consider general "character" traits either need to be abolished or written in great detail to prevent the voters from using the clause to simply vote against players they don't like personally. It shouldn't be just another popularity contest, but an objective determination of the best players in baseball history. All of baseball history, not just some eras while others are whitewashed and neglected by embittered voters.

4. Voter ballots should be made 100% public and subject to scrutiny.

5. Voter terms should be limited. Voter misconduct should be the subject of review.

I've got others but my time is limited here. Suffice it to say that I care about the concept of a meaningful HOF, but the current selection process (and really it's been this way for a long, long time) is fatally flawed at accomplishing its supposed, or desirable, mission.