The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Taking the best cut
Don’t let the barforHall induction get too low
My 2020 Hall of Fame vote: Derek Jeter, Curt Schilling, Roger Clemens, Larry Walker, Barry Bonds.
The easiest thing in the world is telling people you voted for Mariano Rivera for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Mo’s the best closer in history. He had a postseason ERA undetectable to an electron microscope. It took five minutes of research, negligible brainpower and zero stress to check his name.
Plus, by lowkey slipping in at the Christmas party to a stranger that you voted for Mariano, it can make you seem a tad more interesting.
Then again, it inevitably leads to someone diving over bean dip to ask, “Did you vote for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens? How did you not vote for Manny Ramirez? Or Alan Trammell?” And on and on and on …
Until you’re so sick and tired that you blurt out, “How ’bout that Donald
John Trump? Firstballot Hall of Famer!”
When I first got my Hall of Fame ballot, I was thrilled and honored. And that’s when the emails started to arrive: “You’re a fool for voting for Jim Rice. Statistical fact. Roy White is more qualified for the Hall of Fame than Rice.” I laughed and said to myself, “In what sport?”
And then Michael Felger, the Boston radio sports talk host, approached me at a Patriots practice and asked me if I was voting for Rice. I said yes. He told me I was the only new addition to the Boston chapter that year and if Rice, in his last year of eligibility, gets in by one vote I better be ready for a firestorm.
Thank the baseball gods, Rice got in by seven votes.
After hours of research and thought, I had been confident of my decision to check the box next to Rice’s name. I also admit I was intimidated by the thought of nationally being called an idiot or a homer or worse.
Ultimately, what that first year did was to lead me to plenty of thought about the bar to set for players worthy of Hall of Fame induction.
The bar.
The bar is everything. You know how easy it was to vote for Junior Griffey? Beyond easy. Putting a check mark next to Derek Jeter’s name this year isn’t sabermetric rocket science.
But what about Pettitte, Omar Vizquel, Scott Rolen, Jeff Kent and Gary Sheffield on the current ballot? And before them players like Lou Whitaker, Dale
Murphy, Thurman Munson, Don Mattingly, Dave Parker, Tommy John and Dwight Evans? Number of dominant years, comparison to peers, postseason performance, various offensive, pitching and defensive metrics lots to review.
I’ve written more than once that if Clemens and Bonds get into the Hall of Fame and there is no appropriate distinction (preferably on their plaques) that they were involved in performanceenhancing drugs that I will forfeit my ballot. I have voted for both in recent years and those votes hinge on such distinction. This is my reasoning. Both did more than enough to earn the Hall before they did PEDs and before the sport did anything to ban users. Yet for the Hall to openly overlook their involvement would be a sham of which I want no part.
My tipping point arrived in December 2016. If the Today’s Game Era Committee was going to induct former commissioner Bud Selig who turned a blind eye to the PED scourge, who the hell am I to vote against players accused of using them before the majors finally did step in and start suspending guys like Manny Ramirez?
So maybe this is my last vote.
Still, PEDs is a separate issue from the bar. And more precisely, having the bar systematically lowered on you.
After the BBWAA voted in only Barry Larkin in 2012 and no one in 2013, there was considerable gnashing of teeth. Yes, the Hall is considered hallowed baseball ground as a museum. There also is an ongoing business to it all.
Having no one inducted in a given year is not good for the Hall, for Cooperstown, N.Y., and for the business of baseball.
As more older writers were winnowed out and younger ones were ushered in during recent years and a process for making the ballots public was implemented, it is no surprise more voters are checking more names toward the maximum of 10. In the past, you only needed to be contrary and sometimes stupid to leave some names off the ballot. Now you need to be brave/crazy enough to endure international Internet ridicule. Give me a better explanation for why Mariano was the first to receive a 100 percent vote last year and Jeter stands to be the same this year?
Even without PED users, the 20 inducted through BBWAA voting the past six years has been the most in any sixyear stretch in history. And that’s not counting five players — Alan Trammel, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Harold Baines and now Ted Simmons — inducted through the Eras Committees.
That’s not to say the others weren’t terrific players or to disparage them. It’s to say, save Morris, they didn’t clear my bar as a voter for Cooperstown.
The Veterans Committee has been around since the start of the Hall. A vehicle for inducting managers, executives and umpires is needed. Marvin Miller, who had as much impact on the sport as anyone, wouldn’t have gotten in this year without it. There were decades of rightfully reaching back to 19thcentury and early 20thcentury players and Negro League players. Yet starting in 2016, there are Today’s Game and Modern Baseball committees meeting twice every five years. Not to mention the Golden Days Committee and Early Baseball Committee meeting less frequently.
Those first two committees are inducting players who in recent times didn’t get the BBWAA requisite support. In some cases, like Simmons, little support at all. Sorry, Harold Baines is not a Hall of
Famer. Whitaker, Murphy, Munson, Mattingly, Parker, John and Evans and others who weren’t on that Today’s Game list all stand to get inducted.
Why spend the time and effort to research and debate and leave yourself open to public ridicule over the most difficult choices if within a decade the Today’s Game and Modern committees are going to induct those players anyhow? There are so many eyes, some statdriven, some jealousydriven, some just trolls, who hack away at the writers’ credibility. Is it worth it if you’re only a steppingstone to another final authority?
The Baseball Hall of Fame always had the toughest standards to get in and now I see that slowly eroding. The small hall is becoming the big hall. My own trend had been to check more boxes. I started out voting for two or three a year and last year reached eight of a possible 10. With four inducted, I held the line at five this year, including firsttimer Jeter. I even gave some thought to not checking
one name — Larry Walker — that I wavered on before voting for last year.
I thought making the vote public would add to transparency and accountability. I now see an unintended consequence is to apply more and more unreasonable public pressure. For what? Only to be overruled anyway by a committee a few years down the line.
The bar.
Yes, the bar is systematically being lowered.
I’m not even saying it’s necessarily wrong, fanwise, businesswise, even interestwise.
I’m just saying you lower the bar for the next step down you’ll be convinced Bernie Williams and Dwight Evans should 100 percent be in, and eventually you’ll find yourself seriously arguing whether Chet Lemon should be in Cooperstown.
To steal that trite phrase, the Hall of Fame will become the Hall of Very Good.