The Baseball Writers Association of America got it half right with their 2014 selections to the Hall of Fame. Former
Atlanta Braves pitchers Greg
Maddux and Tom Glavine were inducted, as was designated hitter Frank Thomas. They whiffed on Craig
Biggio and a couple of infamous performance enhancers.
Maddux was a slam dunk, receiving the eighth highest vote total of all time. His rotation mate Glavine also appeared on more than 90 percent of ballots, easily making it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility.
Even though neither pitcher was in any danger of missing induction, the fact that such no-brainer selections as Maddux and Glavine were left off of some ballots points to how flawed the selection process is. Baseball writers with axes to grind are allowed to cast votes with no accountability. MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick refused to vote for Maddux, Glavine or any other player from baseball’s “steroid era” for fear of contaminating Cooperstown.
Gurnick and some other members of the BBWAA cost Biggio a chance at induction in 2014. Biggio, the former Houston Astros second baseman, finished his career with 3,060 hits, and missed enshrinement by only two votes. Being anywhere north of 3,000 generally ensures a spot in the Hall, but Biggio was excluded this year simply by playing during the time of baseball’s recent substance abuse struggles.
Biggio was a workmanlike player who stands 5-feet 11-inches tall and weighs in at 185 pounds—not exactly the poster boy for anabolic steroid abuse. He never tested positive and was never even accused of abusing steroids, yet Gurnick and others feel justified in lumping him in with Barry Bonds, Roger
Clemens and others who clearly used performance-enhancing drugs during some portion of their careers.
Speaking of Bonds and
Clemens—they should be in
the Hall as well. If the BBWAA wanted to punish them for their PED abuse by making them wait a year for induction, that’s fine. They had to wait. You’ve made your point, but your Hall of Fame is absolutely ridiculous without both of them in bronze.
Bonds owns the career home run record—equally ridiculous asterisk or not—and had the sweetest swing this side of Griffey. Clemens was only the most ferocious pitcher of his generation and racked up seven Cy Young awards during his career.
With or without PEDs, Bonds and Clemens were two of the best players to ever play their sport, and it makes baseball look far worse to try and arbitrarily decide who to exclude on moral grounds than to just put the best players in and leave the moralizing out of it.
Ty Cobb is in the Hall and he killed a guy, but it was a long time ago, so what’s the big deal, right? The NFL didn’t remove Orenthal from Canton. It might make sense if the voters were waiting for an apology or at least an acknowledgement of their wrongdoing, but Pete Rose copped to betting on baseball years ago, and somehow the writers haven’t seen fit to allow Charlie Hustle into
Cooperstown yet.
So what we have isn’t a Hall of Fame where all of the best players in baseball history are immortalized—just those
with our approval. Why would a fan want to make a pilgrimage to the hinterlands of New York to see an incomplete Hall?
I’m glad the writers inducted Frank Thomas. Even though he was primarily a designated hitter, he deserves to be there. However, he was never one-tenth the player that Barry Bonds was. There’s no reason to take the Hall seriously until Barry, the Rocket and Rose are enshrined.
One Hall of Fame voter didn’t take his responsibility seriously at all. Dan Le
Batard of ESPN abdicated his vote, instead allowing readers of sports website Deadspin to cast his ballot. Even though his actions were supposedly in protest of players such as Bonds and Clemens being excluded from the Hall, there is no excuse for blowing off a public trust like a Hall of Fame ballot.
Le Batard should have been glad he had an opportunity to have his vote counted; he likely won’t next year. Hopefully whoever replaces him will strike out less often than the current voters.
