Top 7: Most Annoying Issues with MLB Hall of Fame Voting

Every week the Top 7 column will be enhanced by the newest addition to the JoeSportsFan Radio Network, Seven Minutes with Jason Major, where our Top 7 guru rants on the current topic, touches on previous lists and also vehemently defends his Cardinals bias…all in around seven minutes.

I firmly believe that the Baseball Hall of Fame is the best Hall of Fame in sports (next to the bowling one of course).  It has the most tradition, and since it’s an individual sport played as a team, it’s easier to filter away from the subjective stuff, and make it more of a black-and-white issue…so you would think.  There are all kinds of problems with the Hall of Fame voting, and they shine through more seemingly every year.  This week’s Top 7 takes a look at the most annoying ones.

7. No unanimous votes
Not one player has ever gotten in with a unanimous vote, and it probably will never happen.  Why?  Because some voter is going to intentionally not vote for him just so it never happens.  The best example was when Cal Ripken was eligible for the Hall.  No one could possibly argue a case against him, and he was clear of all of the scandal, and he passed the moral high ground test, “played the game the right way,” and all of that other crap.  He still only received 98.5% of the vote.  Of all of the guys becoming eligible in the next few years, Greg Maddux probably stands out as the guy most obvious to be in, where you literally couldn’t make an argument against him.  It will be entertaining to see which idiot leaves him off.

6. Old versus new

No debate clearly defines the old versus new baseball trains of thought than the Hall of Fame voting.  On one side, you have the old-school writers, the “get off my lawn!” crowd who swears that you should only go by RBI and ERA, along with their magical formulas for “gamer,” “leader,” and “knowing-how-to-winness.”  On the other side, you have the stat crowd, whose most hardcore members will argue that things that actually happened on a baseball field should be discounted because the numbers didn’t match up with what should have happened.  I am easily in the camp of the stat crowd as the curmudgeons make me ill, but if the stat people wouldn’t be so condescending, they may be able to pull some of the middle ground people into their camp.###MORE###

5. Steroids

I remain a fan of Mark McGwire, so I’m biased, but the following people should not receive more than 28% of the Hall of Fame vote: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Alex Rodriguez.  Steroids aside, McGwire is unquestionably a Hall of Famer, so he is obviously being kept out because he never tested positive for steroids, but the voters are sure that he did it.  In this case, all of the aforementioned people should not receive more than the 28% that McGwire received, since this is the percentage of people who don’t think steroids should be involved in Hall discussions.  All of the other players mentioned have just as much, and mostly more, evidence that they used steroids than McGwire did.  The standard has been set, and it needs to be followed.

4. Magically appearing votes

On what planet does this make sense?  Andre Dawson, who I believe is not a Hall of Famer, gets 45% of the vote in his first year of eligibility, 2002.  Seven years later, he gets 77% of the vote and is elected to the Hall of Fame.  How does someone, with clearly questionable Hall credentials, gain 32% of the vote without ever playing another game?  It’s mind boggling.  There is no logical reason for him gaining so many votes.  So he’s a not a Hall of Famer last year, but this year he is?  And he continued to become more of a Hall of Famer as the years went on?

3. Random Guys Getting Votes

David Segui, Pat Hentgen, and Kevin Appier received one HOF vote this year.  Eric Karros and Ellis Burks got two.  Anyone who voted for these guys should never be allowed to vote again.  One of the most hilarious quotes in baseball the last 20 years was when Ruben Sierra said that he was headed to the Hall of Fame.  I never thought that there was a chance that someone could actually vote for him.  Of all of the people eligible for the Hall this year, only four got zero votes: Shane Reynolds, Mike Jackson, Todd Zeile, and Ray Lankford.

2. The ever-changing criteria

Your head starts to hurt after awhile.  Pete Rose isn’t in because he disgraced the game, but racist, asshole-of-all-time Ty Cobb is fine.  Part of the reason that Dawson got in was because people said that “injuries affected his play” and his stats would have been better if they hadn’t.  Well that’s a new one.  Injuries also affected Brien Taylor and Todd Van Poppel’s careers, should they be in?  They would have had better stats if they weren’t injured too.  Dawson still managed to play for 21 seasons–if he were that crippled he probably would have been out much sooner than that.  Each year new reasons are determined as to why one guy is a Hall of Famer in this particular case, and usually they are impossible to measure.  That’s always good for a system.

1. Self-promoting writers

Jay Mariotti, who hopefully no one actually takes seriously, was unbelievable proud and boastful of his blank ballot that he sent in this year.  One wonders if he actually enjoys watching sports.  Bill Conlin once didn’t vote Nolan Ryan into the Hall because he wouldn’t be his choice to pitch a Game 7.  According to that logic, there should only be two pitchers in the Hall of Fame, and if someone better than one of them comes along, they must be kicked out.  Self-righteous voters and columnists may be the most annoying people in sports.

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