Hall of Fame

I kept a cool head last year when no players were elected to Cooperstown, but as my post so nicely explained, there were multiple candidates worthy of enshrinement. And I define worthy as in even while they were still playing, people referred to them as future Hall of Famers. There's no debate here.

Except that in the world of PEDs, apparently that's the only thing taken into consideration. Nevermind that only five players (Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro) out of everyone on the ballot this year, had ever been connected to steroids, HGH, the cream, the clear, Balco, Biogenesis or any of the B.S. that we hear about seemingly all the time. The BBWAA's stance seems to be, "if you were playing anytime between the mid-90s to mid-00s you are guilty by association."

Yes, three worthy players were elected this year: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas. But they were all new to the ballot. So, once again, every player I listed last year has to be carried over again to next year. It's not that they aren't Hall of Fame material, it's that the voting is a mess. You may have heard that Craig Biggio missed the cut by two votes. Two! The main culprit (other than the occasional idiot voter) is the incomprehensible rule that voters can only select 10 players on any given ballot. Well, because no one was elected last year, we now have a bottleneck of layovers plus the annual new additions, meaning there are more than 10 worthy players. This leaves some guys like Biggio to jussstttttt get squeezed out.

If you think next year will give the voters a chance to catch up, you're wrong. Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Gary Sheffield, Carlos Delgado and Nomar Garciaparra will all be added to the ballot. The first 3 are more-or-less definite which puts us in a similar place as this year. Will Biggio be pushed over the hump, now that everyone is aware of his proximity? All I know is, judging by the last 2 years of selections, there will likely be a lot of negative critics.