[dgo71]

Those are all valid points, and that's not even getting into consideration given to position, the era the player played in and the teams the player played for.

Bert Blyleven is my favorite example of why vote totals can jump, and by extension, why we need a Veteran's Committee. Before Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens surpassed him, Blyleven was third on the all-time strikeout list. Ask anyone who faced him, Bert's curveball was a back-breaker. Know how many shutouts he had? 60. One fewer than Seaver and Ryan, and good for 9th all-time. Those two stats alone scream dominance to me. Blyleven won 287 games, playing for some really, really poor teams. Just 13 wins away from a magic number that (rightly or wrongly) would have had him inducted on his first ballot. His teams were so bad in fact, that in terms of "quality starts", he had 99 such outings in which he was saddled with the loss and had ANOTHER 79 quality starts where he received a no-decision. That's 178 games that could easily have been W's with better offensive support. Keep in mind, his career ERA was 3.13, so it's not like he was asking a lot of his teams' hitters. If he could have won even 10% of those starts - basically if he had the fortune of playing just one season with the Yankees or Dodgers of his era - he's at 304 wins and a HOF lock. A big knock on him was that he never won a Cy Young Award. Well, the same writers who vote for the HOF also vote for postseason awards. So if the writers can get one vote wrong, what's to say they didn't misinterpret a player's worth when handing out CY/MVP awards? He did, however, help win 2 World Series, appear in 2 All-Star games, finish in Top 4 or better in Cy voting 3 times, and consistently rank among the league leaders in every important pitching stat several times.

Some purists feel the Hall should be reserved for only the very, very elite - the Ruths, Aarons and Cobbs of the world - but I think that a HOF consisting of only 50 or so guys would be pretty boring. The Hall still contains less than 1% of the men who have played the game, and I see no problem with varying levels of "greatness" being inducted. In other words, the worst HOFer was still miles ahead of the best "average" player. Great players like Blyleven deserve to be recognized for their real contributions and not just by lining their stats up against the stats of others.

OK, rant over, sorry for going OT....