PUBLIC BALLOTS COULD IMPACT HALL VOTING
Unanimous selection finally might happen
Let’s start on Page 1 of the Hall of Fame handbook, which says: Relax, there’s no such thing as a perfect ballot.
It’s an organic process that combines statistics, historical perspective and, yes, a morals clause. (Think: Pete Rose.) Every election cycle is good for at least one in-your-grill argument, including what to do about suspected performance-enhancing drug users. To some, the inevitable induction that awaits Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens is a sure sign of the apocalypse.
OK, not really. But it’s the hottake debates that make the sport relevant in January. Consider them calisthenics leading up to pitchers and catchers next month, a perfect way to rev up your baseball metabolism. If you are averse to arguments, you’re in the wrong arena. We’re talking about Cooperstown, not Washington. Athletes, not politicians. Diverse opinions are a lifeblood, not a reason to hate.
Still, there’s no excuse for the Hall’s failure to unanimously elect anyone in its 81-year history. Those who’ve been fractionally snubbed include Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. Ken Griffey Jr. almost made it last year with 99.3%; no one has ever gotten closer. Still, three voters decided Junior wasn’t good enough for first-ballot coronation.
That’s not just wrong, it’s also an embarrassment to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. The three dissenters were unidentified, thanks to the guarantee of anonymity. No one stepped forward to own a non-vote or explain the reasoning behind it. Thankfully, that’s changing: Starting in 2018, votes will be public.
That’s good news for Mariano Rivera, who’ll be on the 2019 ballot, and Derek Jeter, who’ll be eligible in 2020. Both deserve to run the table — anyone who votes against them will have some explaining to do.
There will be lingering resistance to the new transparency. Some balloters will cling to the idea that elections are private in any democracy.
To that, we say: Lighten up, this is baseball. Our way of life is hardly under attack.
Besides, an open election would give a forum to those who should be firm in their beliefs. Who knows, maybe the antiGriffey trio used their ballots as a protest against the steroid era. A blank election form would be the ultimate “Take that!” to those who think Bonds and Clemens are snakes, not superstars and have no place in the Cooperstown debate.
I disagree with that philosophy, but even if you oppose those two, there was no reason to punish someone as worthy as Griffey. Motive No. 2 might have been to follow history’s lead: If Ruth and DiMaggio couldn’t garner 100%, then no one deserves it, neither Griffey nor Rivera nor Jeter nor whoever else dominates the game in the future.
And this hasn’t been simply an anti-New York Yankees bias, either. Ty Cobb fell four votes shy in Cooperstown’s first year of balloting (1936). Incredibly, Willie Mays missed by 23 votes.
There’s one other possibility, even more shameful. Maybe the anti- Griffey vote came from contrarians who were simply looking for an easy troll. Keep Junior’s name off the ballot, gin up the outrage, then scurry away into the darkness.
As we said, we’ll start hunting down the cockroaches 12 months from now, although our hunch is that public scrutiny will change some of the more bizarre voting patterns. Social media is powerful enough to do that.
Of course, it’s true that groupthink can work in the wrong direction; Twitter can be as intimidating as it is liberating. But anyone who believes in their own logic shouldn’t be afraid of facing the public.
Bonds and Clemens have received my votes for years, not because performance-enhancing drugs weren’t game-changers. They were and still are. I’m not advocating for a generation of juicers. But, as I’ve written, if the federal government couldn’t nail Bonds and Clemens for steroids, don’t expect me to punish them, either. If commissioners Bud Selig and Rob Manfred say Bonds and Clemens were and are in good standing, that meets the threshold for my vote.
Besides, if you’re looking for someone to lash out against for the pharmaceutical era, Selig is the better target. It was on his watch that PEDs washed over the sport like a monsoon.
Furthermore, Selig was complicit in the collusion among owners against free agents in the 1980s; the commissioner himself was called as a witness in the case that ultimately ruled in favor of the players.
If Selig had been on my Hall of Fame ballot — which he wasn’t because his candidacy was decided on by the Today’s Game Era committee — I would have voted against him.
And I would have said so loudly.
Klapisch writes for The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record, part of the USA TODAY Network.