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01-16-2013 Quick, who was a better baseball player: Harry Heilmann or Jimmie Foxx? Acceptable answers:
Unacceptable answers:
The actual answer? Well, if you're just polling the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA), a group tasked with voting annually on who is granted entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame, you're going to receive an answer that weighs in on the unacceptable end of my spectrum. While Double X and Heilmann's Mayonnaise are both in the Hall of Fame, Jimmie Foxx received just 79.2% of the vote while Harry Heilmann garnered 86.75% on the respective years they were inducted.[1] Stan Verrett: "Is that bad?" Neil Everett: "It's not good." Like The Who asked, "Why should I care?" Both are worthy of induction and both made it to the Hall of Fame. No one cares what percentage of the vote a player received, so long as there is a semi-recognizable likeness of their bronzed face on a plaque in Cooperstown, these numbers don't matter. So why all the ruckus? The ruckus I've raised is due to the BBWAA and their holier-than-thou attitude while voting. Outside of possibly the internet, the Hall of Fame is THE coolest place to go for baseball history. If you're a baseball fan and haven't visited, go. Go now! You'll think you died and went to a mystical cornfield in Iowa. Send a quick text to your boss, your spouse, your kids - whoever is going to miss you - and head out to Cooperstown immediately. My only other recommendation: plan on taking two days to tour the Hall. The place is just too overwhelming to complete in one day. You might not think you would get tired of seeing yet another game-used bat or jersey from Ted Williams or Willie Mays, but after a few hours, you get glazed over like Laverne and Shirley looking at a conveyor of Schlotz bottles going by. The Hall of Fame is a shrine, and I'd like to see it contain the most accurate account of the greatest moments and players and artifacts in baseball history. We, the visitors, deserve that. This way of thinking has fueled me to have recent change of heart. I used to think that (likely) liars like Clemens (see: Lance Armstrong) didn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. They cheated. And then they lied about cheating. And while it was no surprise that Bonds, Clemens, amd Sosa weren't elected to the HOF on their inaugural attempts, something struck me while reading the news across ESPN's ticker. Seeing "Bonds (762 career HRs) (36.2% of the vote) ... Clemens (7 Cy Young Awards) (37.6%) not elected to Hall of Fame" made me sad, not happy. (Let me interject here that I still don't know how to feel about Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe being in the Hall...) It was the first time I didn't feel mad at these suspected cheaters. It was the first time I thought about visting Cooperstown and feeling like something would be lacking without these guys' plaques on the walls. C'mon, home runs might be the most glamourous, most sexiest stat in all of sports! Do we really want a shrine to baseball that doesn't include the all-time (MLB) leader? Do we want to miss seeing the guy with the most Cy Youngs and 3rd most strikeouts ever? I think this is a great time to mention players who did receive votes this year and in the recent past: Aaron Sele[2] Reggie Sanders[2] More less than stellar votes from the past several years here. Buster Olney also had an article about this recently, but I lost the link. He made a whole roster from low-quality HOF candidates who actually received votes. This is BS! There is clearly something wrong with the writers. Writers? - you ask. Yes, the writers. They're cutesy with their votes. They play god with the entry to the HOF. They're wildly vindictive and inconsistent. Read how this clown, Garry Howard, defends his vote. "He has to pay." "He has to pay." Sniveling like a little 6-year-old. Baseball fans don't care about your personal vendetta. We debate whether someone IS or ISN'T deserving of Cooperstown...not which ballot they deserve to go in on. It makes me sick that these petty writers have such authority. Guys like Fergie Jenkins and Gaylord Perry. They each made the Hall in 1991 - on their 3rd ballot. Credentials: Jenkins - 284 wins and 3192 strikeouts. Perry - 314 wins and 3534 strikeouts.[3] It really took three tries for the voters to determine they were worthy of the Hall? Examples like that exist throughout the history of HOF voting.
Voters don't have to make their ballots public, which I would like to change (see below), but here are a few examples to ponder: Bud Geracie, Mike Hunt (if that is your real name), and Barry Rozner - how do you vote for Bonds and not Clemens? Jay Mariotti, you're such an easy target. Another from 2010. Google makes these curse-inducing articles so easy to find! OK, enough complaining (well, maybe). I'm tired of the current system, but I don't necessarily want to remove the voters with the most knowledge of the subjects. I just want to give them a different framework to vote within. Here is how I say we fix it. Just three changes... 1) Players max out at three years on the ballot. Currently, a player can remain on the ballot for up to 15 years, if they have received 5% or more of the previous year's vote.[4] This is crap. Consider this: the D-Day invasion was planned for two years.[5] It took the BBWAA nine years to vote Goose Gossage into the Hall of Fame.[6] During those nine years - between 2000 when Goose received 33.3% of the vote, and 2008, when he received 85.8% of the vote - he threw nary a pitch. So what accounts for over half of the BBWAA changing their mind on his HOF-worthiness? There are plenty of stories like this. These writers have votes because they are supposed to be experts! Decide already! 2) Unlimited votes. Currently, the members of the BBWAA are allowed up to ten votes each year.[4] So this has to follow from my first proposed change. Just in the event that there are more than ten worthy candidates on a ballot, I don't want anyone's hands tied. After all, time will be of the essence. 3) All voting should be made public. I feel this will add much-needed accountability to the process. Since no player - not from Babe Ruth to Cal Ripken Jr. - has ever received 100% of the vote, I want answers. Since Walt Weiss received a vote, I want answers. Some players are slam dunks for the HOF. Some players are airballs. I want writers to be able to explain their votes to the fans. Take a look at yourselves, voters. With these wacky votes and non-votes, are you punishing the players, or punishing the fans? Have fun! -T [1] http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hof/hofmem4.shtml [2] http://bbwaa.com/13-hof-ballots [3] http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_1991.shtml [4] http://baseballhall.org/hall-famers/rules-election/bbwaa [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord [6] http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hall-of-fame-ballot-history.shtml |
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