As a kid in the early 60s, I recall getting my first real baseball book, My Greatest Day in Baseball, by John Carmichael. Obviously, it was what would now be thought of as an old edition. Those old guys were ballplayers. I think it is something in us that makes us want to have seen some superstar in our times that is the modern equivalent of Ruth, Johnson, Mathewson, Gehrig, Young, Lajoie, Speaker, Cobb, Waddell or Wagner. But the truth is that the guys we see today, and those we saw 5 years ago, for the most part, have no business being compared to those ten. Most modern stars aren't worthy of carrying their jock straps to the laundry room.
We want to have seen superstars too... and that drive is what's put the screws to the Hall. Imagine that if we all went to baseball heaven, where there are 4 fields adjacent to each other, with bp being pitched on each field, and the 4 players who are taking their cuts on those 4 fields are Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Gary Carter, and Kirby Puckett... to which fields will the true fanatics of baseball flock? And which 2 fields will have empty seats immediately behind the plate?
I've not looked at a modern edition of My Greatest Day in Baseball, but I'm sure that it would have modern players in it. Belle, Larkin, Martinez, Morris were really good players, but they fall far short of my concept of what a Hall of Famer should be. My concept is evidently in the minority (which doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong) because a bunch of merely very good ballplayers have already made it into the Hall. So I think it is getting close to the point of being meaningless... screw it, let everyone who made it to the majors into the Hall (excepting Rose and the other banned guys). And for good measure, anyone who didn't make it up but was there for spring training 3 seasons or more, put them in too. And the horses they rode in on.
|