In the biggest news of the baseball offseason, and despite side-stories around it, some of the greats to ever play the game were finally voted into MLB’s Hall of Fame on Wednesday.
Pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine were nearly sure-bets and slugger Frank Thomas admitted he couldn’t sleep and was nervous about the entire process.
Once voted in, a picture of Thomas was tweeted out with the ultimate look of accomplishment on face….
But we can never talk about those voted into the Hall of Fame without talking about the process and who was left out.
Craig Biggio was in an unfortunate situation by being tied to the 10-person per ballot max and was just two votes shy of entry. Sure, the HOF rules may need to be tweaked, but it’s still pretty idiotic to sell your vote as a form of weak protest like Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald did.
Le Batard writes for one of the biggest newspapers in the country, has his own website and a show on ESPN. He couldn’t use those avenues to push his opinion? While I think it’s a novel idea to let the fans have some sort of say in the HOF process, voting someone into the HOF should be considered an honor. Not a gimmick. Unlike all others, baseball is a traditionalist sport and some things should be kept as a higher standard than a readers’ poll.
And of course, we have to talk steroids. Because guys like Roger Clemons and Mark McGwire only continue their slide in the amount of votes needed. Raphael Palmeiro won’t even be on the ballot next year because he couldn’t even earn the minimum 5% to continue to stay on. What does this tell us?
Baseball writers with a vote, hate the steroid era.
While it’s not possible to ignore the records and accomplishments of guys like Bonds, Clemons and McGwire, what should be done is have these records in the Hall along with asterisk but never enshrine admitted steroid users to be immortalized. This solves the problem of recognizing the record, but also doesn’t honor those who did break the rules of the game to gain an edge. No matter how you feel on steroid use, and I’m actually for it to some extent, but these guys knew the rules and chose to break them.
Besides steroids and ballots sold, some of the best players to ever suit up were enshrined and that’s who we should be focusing on and celebrating:
Because who could ever forget the fact that “chicks do love the long ball”.
Anybody else miss baseball season yet?
