Putting it all out there
It’s time Hall of Fame votes were public
At a little before 1 p.m., yesterday, I stopped at the post office on Winter Hill in Somerville and dropped off my 2018 ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I didn’t have to tell you that. It was my choice. My ballot includes filledin squares for 10 players: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling, Jim Thome and Omar Vizquel.
I didn’t have to tell you that, either.
Again, it was my choice. And it’s always been my choice. I may be old school, but my school isn’t a oneroom place in rural 19thcentury Minnesota, a la “Little House on the Prairie.” I believe voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America have an obligation to make their ballots public, something that was unheard of back in the day but has gained growing popularity in recent years. It was just last year, in fact, that the BBWAA voted to make all Hall of Fame ballots public.
The pulling away of the curtain to the Hall of Fame voting booth was to have begun with this cycle. That means you’d have been privy to my nods to Bonds, Clemens, Guerrero and the others, whether or not I wanted you to know.
But then something goofy happened: The Hall of Fame stepped in and said, “Nah, we’re not going to make the ballots public.”
Individual voters may still announce their picks, as I have done here. But if you’re a voter who’d prefer to keep pretending that the Hall of Fame is some kind of secret society — I guess we can call it Aaronnati, or maybe Scully and Bones — then you get to keep on keepin’ on. Just as five voters left Tom Seaver off their ballots in 1992, and just as a whopping 23 voters skated past Willie Mays in 1979, we’re headed for yet another election cycle in which fans will be deprived a full accounting of how the process works.
I do believe in the sanctity of the secret ballot, but only as it pertains to publicly elected officials. This is the Baseball Hall of Fame we’re talking about, and the millions of fans who purchase the tickets and watch the games and turn their backyards into various Little Fenways don’t get to decide who goes to Cooperstown. And so the job is given to the BBWAA.
Sorry for the quick ride down to the Self-Congratulatory Highway, but nobody on earth could do a better job. While I happen to believe Gil Hodges and Luis Tiant belong in Cooperstown, that they’re not in is just the way it is. We’ve mostly gotten it right.
But we owe it to you to be up front about our choices. Willie Mays is considered by many to be the greatest all-around player in the game’s history, so, yes, absolutely, the five writers who didn’t vote for him should have been made to explain themselves. That they were allowed to ride off into the sunset — a nice way of saying they’re probably all dead — is a miscarriage of baseball justice.
Something else happened with this voting cycle that needs to be mentioned: Not long ago, Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan sent an impassioned letter to voting members of the BBWAA, urging them not to support players who have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Morgan is a member of the Hall of Fame’s board. His missive was sent from his Hall of Fame email account. What we have, then, is a Hall of Fame official offering to guide our hand as we fill out our ballots.
This has boiled the blood of some voters. Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports has gone so far as to announce he won’t submit a ballot this year, writing that, “I will not participate in this charade where the shepherds charged with telling the story of baseball want to avoid telling the ugly parts.”
Passan, who I greatly admire, also takes umbrage at Morgan’s view that the Hall of Fame is “the most sacred place in baseball.”
Writes Passan: “The most sacred place in baseball? Nah. It’s just a museum. That’s all it ever was. That’s all it ever will be.”
Easy, Jeff. As writers, we’re all prone to hyperbole. Morgan, too, should be given some latitude. Besides, put all this nonsense aside and, yeah, I think the Hall of Fame is pretty cool.
But while Morgan was an exciting, charismatic ballplayer in his day, this letter sadly reveals him to be an old man who either can’t or won’t admit that the Hall of Fame already has its share of enshrinees who used performance-enhancing drugs.
It’s not my job to tell other voters how to mark their ballots. It’s not Joe Morgan’s, either.
Oh, we can all raise our eyebrows over this or that ballot, such as how Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Bill Livingston made just two picks — Thome and Vizquel, both longtime members of the hometown Indians who are up for election for the first time.
At least Livingston made his ballot public.
As we all should.
As we always should have.