This Baseball Hall of Fame ballot doesn't qualify as news
This isn't necessarily the last time I will write a column about the Baseball Hall of Fame.
It's probably the last time I will make it personal.
I received my official ballot in the mail this week. Last year, I cast an anonymous ballot. This year, I'll do the same.
It would have been easy to shrink from the responsibility of considering the merits and demerits of a polarizing player like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens or Alex Rodriguez. Suffice it to say, I did not wield the character clause like a kid who received his first air rifle for Christmas.
I could have. It was my first ballot, after all. My second ballot feels no less special. With Bonds and Clemens termed out, it's actually much more fun trying to decide whether a player like Carlos Beltran falls on the right or wrong side of Cooperstown's borderline based on merit, rather than his drug test results.
But my days of hashing this out in public have passed. I'll leave that thought exercise to the hundreds of voters who choose to reveal their ballots, and the hundreds of BBWAA members not yet eligible to vote but eminently qualified to weigh in on the definition of “fame.”
Two years ago, I wrote this: “Hall of Fame voting has become a feedback loop. There's a reason the social media era gave birth to the first unanimous (inductee, Mariano Rivera). It's the same reason the ballots missing (Derek) Jeter, and those including (Raul) Ibañez, (Adam) Dunn, (Brad) Penny and (J.J.) Putz remain anonymous. The power of the secret ballot lies in the diversity of thought it promotes.” Receiving my first actual ballot only strengthened my resolve on this issue.
Let's say there are 400 Hall of Fame ballots returned in a given year. It's great fun letting everyone know why your ballot is right and theirs are wrong — until it seems as if legitimizing one-400th of the voting results as “news” has consequences for the process itself.
In October 2016, Politico reported a panel of Republican strategists had identified a flaw in polls showing Donald Trump was in danger of losing the presidential election: Voters didn't “want to admit to pollsters that they are backing the controversial Republican nominee.” As a result, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton appeared to hold a larger lead in polls than she would at the ballot box. “With Trump falling behind in the majority of swing states,” the article portended, “an overwhelming polling error may represent his best hope to win next month.”
Who knew an overwhelming polling error could have anything in common with a durable No. 1 starting pitcher in October?
The stakes are lower in Cooperstown. But the basic question is the same: How much truer would the result be if there were no pressure on public voters to produce a “perfect ballot?”
Make no mistake, the public pressure is real. There's only one Hall of Fame vote every year, but the results of the eight endof-year BBWAA award votes reveal a similar trend.
The 2022 season gave us two unanimous Cy Young Award winners for only the second time in history. The AL MVP (Aaron Judge) fell two votes shy of unanimity; the AL Rookie of the Year (Julio Rodriguez) fell one vote shy. From 2016-20, five of the 10 Rookies of the Year were unanimous winners. That had only happened once before in history. No one wants to be left holding an outlier ballot. It's like signing up for a public whipping. (Believe me: I have receipts.)
That's not why the names listed on my ballot will remain private. On the contrary, should
I ever submit a ballot that remotely qualifies as news — if the final tally reveals I'm the one voter who left Derek Jeter off my ballot, for example — I'll gladly set the record straight.
In the meantime, I'll be checking my boxes, mailing my envelope, and letting fresher voices than mine add to the discourse that dominates this time of year.
There was a time when using this platform to explain every ballot process promoted critical thought about sports, and baseball in particular. How should we define fame? Which statistics matter the most for pitchers, for hitters, for fielders? How should we define character and sportsmanship and integrity?
Too often now, the answers to these questions are mistaken for sanctimony and hypocrisy when, in reality, they're just one voter's opinion. It's not news. It's not worthless either. Good questions deserve good answers, not automatic backlash for the dissenting opinions among us.