Memo to Bud Selig: Do Not Adopt NBA Fan Vote Policy for MLB Awards

Someone take away Bud Selig's access to the newspaper and unplug his Internet connection. Block all calls from David Stern, please.

NBA Commissioner David Stern recently announced that fans will be allowed to vote for the NBA MVP this season.

While you can debate the merits of that decision, my concern is that MLB buffoon Bud Selig will see this and adopt the idea and apply it to Major League Baseball awards voting.

Fans can already vote to determine starters in the All-Star Game and the All-Star MVP. But regular postseason awards, such as MVP and Cy Young, have traditionally been the domain of baseball writers.

Now you can debate how well the writers do until the cows come home, and you would be able to make a very effective argument against the writers.

In fact, old-school writers who still base the Cy Young award on wins, for example, continue to tarnish the awards landscape.

But as advanced metrics become more mainstream in baseball circles, there is some evidence that this may be changing for the better.

Regardless, giving fans a vote for MLB postseason awards would not help the situation. There is one simple reason why this won't work:

Fans are biased.

And they are passionate about that bias.

They wear that bias on their sleeves. Literally.

That's right; they love their teams and their favorite players, and they can't help but let that affect their decision-making.

Sure, there are writers who have biases, and there are fans like myself who can be objective.

But from my experience writing for this site and others, the vast majority of fans will stand by their man, as it were, when it comes to voting.

That would leave more deserving players on the outside looking in. 

Can you imagine a Red Sox fan voting for a Yankee and vice versa? Cubs and White Sox fans embracing each other's players for postseason awards?

Look, I understand that fans pay the bills. They watch the games on television, and they spend astronomical amounts of money to take their families to ball games.

Yet as the All-Star voting often proves, they don't necessarily make the best judges. But at least that is an exhibition game and not an award that affects a player's legacy.

As questionable as some of the votes from the writers have been over the years, this is their profession, their livelihood. Often, their reputation is at stake.

Also, at least in theory, they should be knowledgeable of the game given that is what they do, while us fans merely use sports as an escape from what we do.

Recognizing that, if any changes were made, it would probably be better to allow ballplayers and managers, coaches, and front office personnel more of a say than the fans.

Sure, there would be biases there as well, as no system is perfect. No matter what MLB does, it will be flawed in some way. Still, why take a flawed system and make it worse? 

So perhaps it would be better just to leave it the way it is and hope that as new voters become eligible, they will do a better job of incorporating meaningful stats into their decision making.

Wins and RBI? Blech. FIP, OBP, and WAR? OK, now we're talking.

Actually, this new NBA rule is not going to make that big of a difference anyway.

The NBA fan vote will only count as one total vote, with the remaining 124 votes coming from a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Meanwhile, the Pro Football Hall of Fame this past season allowed fans to cast their votes for possible Hall of Fame candidates, but the tally was for "suggestion" only and not officially used to decide the Class of 2010.

So let's hope that Bud doesn't decide that fans should determine the next MVP or Cy Young Award winner. 

That decision would be as bad as letting the winner of the All-Star Game determine who has home field advantage in the World Series. Boy, I hope that never happens!