2013 Hall of Fame ballot

I agree with Andy: The luster enshrining the HOF was wiped out by today's vote. I never much cared about Canton (NFL) or Springfield (NBA) but always held Cooperstown in awe. No longer. Maybe the best solution is simply to hold no more votes and leave it the way it is now-- a tarnished relic of yesterday that is now irrelevant.

Personally I think Biggio got alot of sympathetic or deflected votes from the juicers.

Biggio was a good player.

Biggio was not a great player.

Yes I know he had 3,000 hits.

But a lifetime .281 hitter with SLG @ .433?

If Morris is a fringe guy, Biggio is with him.

visick

Final votes apparently in and nobody made it. This is my greatest concern on the HOF issue. Confirmed or even suspected users will have no chance. But they will siphon off enough votes to make it impossible for players we all agree were clean from getting the required 75%.

I understand the logic cheaters do not deserve to get in and be honored beside Aaron, Mays and Ruth. But to imagine that given the blossoming of legitimate new conditioning and nutritional methods athletes, even clean ones were better than their ancestors. To say there was not anyone who deserved to get in is not right. If cheaters are kept out then I think we have to take the best of those we believe did not cheat and put them in. But to argue nobody from an entire generation deserves to be in HOF is just silly.

Unfortunately without clear directives on what to do the split opinion on who is worthy will spread the votes too thin and I am concerned we will go a record period of years when nobody gets elected. At some point in time during that drought the HOF has to become a stale place barely hanging on life support.

However you feel about all this PED stuff do you really want a Cooperstown where majority of the young customers has nobody who was elected withing their lifetime. Where will the pride that leads to identifying with a generation culminating in one generation declaring theirs as the golden age? The HOF if it has a 10 to 20 year stretch of no new members could become so stale the young generation loses interest until the HOF itself will be thought of as irrelevant.

Perhaps when it reaches a stage of irrelevancy someone will introduce the concept it is ok to elect any player to Hall of Irrelevancy. How high can those standards be after all. And perhaps some day there will be just enough elected it once again becomes associated with greatness and all will be smiles in Mudville. In the meantime tears because mighty Casey has struck out and there is just too many questions of how Casey became mighty.

I cannot envision any scenario that will prevent Maddux from sailing in with 90-95% next year, so there's that.

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"


Chicken Little

The hand-wringing over the failure to vote anyone in this year is silly. Along with Maddux, Glavine, and Thomas next year, sure-fire guys like P. Martinez, R. Johnson, Griffey, Smoltz, and Hoffman are eligible over the next few years, along with bubble candidates like Kent, Wagner, Mussina, V. Guerrero, Edmonds. I assume Sheffield, Manny, and maybe Pudge Rodriguez will get the Clemens/Bonds treatment. But still, that's a lot of upcoming inductions.

I think yesterday's vote reveals an intention to essentially re-write history; whether we like the PEDs or not, they were a reality. The stats were counted and the games were counted, so if career numbers are the criteria for election, on what basis do we leave Bonds and Clemens out? I can't stand the thought of either one, but they dominate the record books.

As several here have pointed out already, the character clause reeks of hypocrisy anyway given some of the players already there. Some owners have their own issues, to say the least, and let's not forget MLB itself; they've juiced the ball at times to boost home runs and we can certainly recall the commissioner celebrating and promoting the McGwire/Sosa chase for the record back in '98 when even a cursory glance at either of them left no doubt that both endorsed the "better living through chemistry" philosophy.

Another element here is an analysis of the voters. While driving yesterday I listened as one of the satellite radio stations revealed some of the ballots cast by the baseball writers. Several were head-scratchers. One of the voters - a lady from an LA paper (sorry I can't recall the name) - actually voted for Shawn Green for the HOF! I must have missed something there.

I was going to posts something about my thoughts on nobody being voted in but this expressed my thoughts better than anything I could write.

The PED era happened. Asterisk the records that "may be" in question if you like. Vote in the best players of that era---jerks, warts, and all. Or ban them from baseball and HOF consideration, if you are prepared to state unequivocally who used and who didnt. (I would bet that we have already enshrined players who have used PEDs. Oh, the horror!) But to not vote in anyone in this class was spiteful, vindictive, and ridiculous..........

I get it if you want to keep out PED users. But if you are not going to vote for Bonds, Clemens, etc you at least should vote for the best of whomever you thought was clean as reward for staying clean. Maybe you think Biggio BA was low at .281 but he did that against PED enhanced pitching. Shouldn't that count for something. And I remember him as an excellent defensive second baseman. Writers should not be allowed to hand in an empty ballot. Either vote for someone or do not submit a ballot. An empty ballot should get you banned from voting for a few years if not for life. What a pompous arrogant thoughtless stupid thing to do. I do not know how many but there were many who could have voted but submitted no ballot. Thus they did not count against the 75% needed. If you wanted to make a statement that was the right way to do it. Those submitting an empty ballot did not make a statement about the period of baseball. They made a statement about how self absorbed they are. Voting is a privilege, not a right.

In my mind this diminishes the baseball HOF.

I think yesterday's vote reveals an intention to essentially re-write history

I think the Baseball Hall of Fame itself understands it's simply a museum devoted to the history of baseball, but clearly the BBWAA doesn't. In effect, they want to build a "special" World War II museum that pretends Adolf Hitler didn't exist and the holocaust never happened.

My take:

Since it's impossible to accurately define who did what during the steroid era, we swallow hard and let them in. There is no fair method of admission and exclusion, and the writers shouldn't be playing judge and jury on this.

Both MLB and the writers chose to look the other way during the steroid era. The playing field was the playing field during this era, the same as it was in the deadball era, segregation era, etc... It's not a pretty slice of history, but it happened. The players who played were major league baseball players, and should be part of the major league baseball hall of fame. The historical numbers are already skewed, the records are public, and exclusion from the HOF doesn't change that. It's up to the fans to say that "Bonds hit more homers but I think we all know why". Sanctimonious writers like Tom Verducci, George King, Howard Bryant, Lavelle Neal (to name a few) turn all the baseball awards into a popularity contest and a soapbox and diminish their relevancy, and keeping Bonds out doesn't undo his accomplishments, just like Pete Rose is still the hit king (followed by another rather loathsome character who resides in the Hall, not in the writer's trashed vote wastebasket).

The Hall of Fame's Motto is: "Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations." Total failure on all points with this vote. I think that in addition to opening the doors to suspected and known users, they open a wing for the Mitchell report and detail the history of this era and how it unfolded. Come clean and move forward.

Excellence, as voted by the BBWAA:
The oddest Hall of Fame votes in history