And it's in, Ortiz has been elected to the Hall
 

Only he is allowed to pop positive and face no repercussion in the vote. Bonds denied for the 10th time, Ortiz in. What a complete joke. Turning it off now.

In the spirit of Meat Loaf…….2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

If you get my meaning.

I believe the others get a second chance with the Modern committee this summer

I'm disappointed in baseball. I'm sure Ortiz is a nice guy, but they applied a different set of standards to “Big Papi” since he is an MLB studio analyst for FOX Sports. He contributes to the network's regular season, All-Star Game and MLB Postseason coverage and I'm sure that helped him get in the hall.

Absolutely crazy...

Totally agree, Ortiz, referred to as 'Big Sloppy' by Yankee fans gets a pass when the other guys don't... He might be the only guy that was 'mistaken' for someone else, while flirting around with the drug lords wife... Put that on his bust...

Big papi may be HOF material...but certainly not more so than bonds/arod/clemens.

It's appalling. The whole world is upside down at the moment!

Papi never tested positive in ALL the years after the rules were put in place. He's a deserving 1st ballot HOFer. I've never witnessed a better clutch hitter.

Having said that, I do also believe, Clemens and Bonds deserve to be in.

That is proof how horrible the testing was.

Bonds and Clemens both ended their careers in 2007 without a suspension or proven positive test from Major League Baseball.

Bonds and Clemens didn’t test positive in all the years the testing was in place either. It makes zero logical sense that Ortiz and Ortiz alone is forgiven while everyone else continues to be denied. Ortiz was nowhere near as good as Bonds, Rodriguez, Clemens.

This years ballot seems to have very little to due with the 2 dominating factors of recent history: statistical performance and steroid status. Ortiz is let in for no consistent logical reason, Schilling is denied because for the first time ever people want to invoke the character clause for off field behavior (can anyone cite any single example of a player kept out of the hall for off field behavior?) to punish outspoken political views the media writers as a group hate, Vizquel has a historic plummet over his much more serious off the field allegations.

Hell, how does Gary Sheffield get more votes than Alex Rodriguez? This ballot appears the result of different than normal standards and outright double standards.

Don't know how good or bad it was. I'm not a doctor or a steroid lab technician. But the testing did catch quite a few players and Papi wasn't one of them.

+1 agree with every word. Most clutch hitter I ever saw. And I am a lifetime Yankees fan. Finally, yes, Clemens and Bonds ought to be in.

Curt Schilling BBWAA votes 2019-20-21-22: 60.9, 70, 71.1, 58.6
 

Schilling will never get in after his evil rants. Far beyond the "character clause" with him.

Did Bonds... so why the double standard.. maybe that Drug Lord has some pull in the hall votes :D

Take a step back and enjoy the moment, what an outfit, what a reaction.

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/...t%20all%2Dtime).

Schillings problem wasn't that his rants were political, it's that they targeted the guys voting on the hall of Fame. If you want to win an election, treating the electorate badly is a very poor strategy. (See, eg, both "makers and takers" and "deplorables", and note who didn't win their respective elections.) There are plenty of conservatives in the hall of Fame.

And this year in particular, his vote totals may be due, in part, to asking to be removed from the ballot. The hall declined to do so, but individual voters may have honored his wishes.

Much better quality testing never caught Lance Armstrong. It usually only catches the players that can'i afford the good stuff. Plus when the test they only test for one or a very small number of PEDs. It is not a test that each time covers everything. That would be way to expensive. This is not a guess by me I have a 30+ year friend that works at the lab in Las Vegas that tests pro athletes for PEDs.

My thought process used to be 'keep the juicers out', but when Bud Selig, and a lot of the other managers/executives who enabled PED usage (or at least looked the other way) started going in, I figured it was a bit hypocritical to keep out only the players.

Curt Schilling advocated the killing of reporters in the United States. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. That's not politics. That's called character and human decency.

It more likely was a jackass in Curt's case.

You might think it is a good thing that it is being invoked for the first time ever, but keeping him out for "evil rants" absolutely falls under the character clause, unless one is saying that the Hall should completely ignore it's own rules to keep out vocal supporters of the political opposition. Which.... Well, that's not surprising these days at all.

Character clause and yet Cap Anson is still in. What a hoot!

I do not understand the Schilling debate. I would argue that while being a jerk doesn’t help the majority of pitchers with similar records are not in the Hall see Luis Tiant, Ron Guidry, Vida Blue, Bob Welch, Dave Stewart, Bucky Walters, Orel Herschiser, Lew Burdette, Kevin Brown, Dave Key, David Cone, David Wells, Billy Pierce, Allie Reynolds, Don Newcombe and many more that I cannot think of right now.

But, but the bloody sock!

So Papi never did test positive? Everyone is just assuming he did? or he did....why the uproar?

I'm in Chicago so paid little attention to Big Papi and the Red Sox, and the Yankees for that matter, unless they were in the playoffs or Series.

I personally always thought Frank Thomas juiced, look at his melon.

And he played football, and in the 80's I'd say 75-80% of every football team juiced.

And Big Frank got in.

But could be completely wrong. That's always a possibility.

There is no way Frank Thomas used steroids. He was one of the players who publicly said that he would refuse the initial survey testing so that more then 5% of the players failed and ensured that there would be widespread testing.

+1 agree exactly

He tested positive during the first round of testing. That's not speculation - Ortiz himself has admitted it.

I guess there is no more uproar about a career DH getting in after Edgar Martinez was elected. Personally, I don't think any DH deserves first ballot election. Defense matters. What's next . . . holders in Canton?

And what if Bonds and Clemens were elected? Would they even accept? Imagine the induction speech. Remember Enos Slaughter's opening remark?
God only knows what Bonds would say. It might be the first speech to get booed. How many fellow HOFers would skip the ceremony in protest? The sanctity of the induction ceremony would be in serious jeopardy.

[QUOTE=Collectorsince62;2189736]I guess there is no more uproar about a career DH getting in after Edgar Martinez was elected. Personally, I don't think any DH deserves first ballot election. Defense matters. What's next . . . holders in Canton?

"holders"....hahahahahahahaa!!!!!!!

So he did test positive and there is a public record of it. Ok, cuz someone earlier in the thread said he did not.

So if there is record of this, I too am dumbfounded. How does he get in and not Clemens & Bonds???!!!!!

Has any voter explained, gave reasoning, for voting him in and not the other 2?

I don't know......that's just Frank talking, and again, could be true, but could also be a lie. A sports figure ever lie before?

I'm not sure I knew a non-QB/Kicker/Punter that wasn't juicing at every level in the 80's. I'm sure there were some, but not many.

I'll "Buck" the trend here, and celebrate the 2022 class with some cards.

Quite the average group there.



Give me Bonds and Clemens over any and all of them.

So you’d also agree that AL pitchers shouldn’t get in? After all, offense matters.

He’s a nice guy and he’s in the media now so let’s look the other way. I guess.

From the beginning, The Big Hurt was always a loud outspoken opponent to steroids. Most other stars of the era avoided the subject. He advocated for testing. He was always built like a truck, even when he was young. He played TE at Auburn. His existing physique was what Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, etc we’re trying to bulk up to by using the steroids. They started with normal athletic physiques and became huge later on. Frank was already huge.

This is the horror of the steroid era, that it’s almost impossible to prove a negative and almost everyone except maybe Derek Jeter at some point has been under suspicion by someone.

Awesome, I wondered if there was a Buck O’Neill card in existence!

Although I'm a National League proponent, I don't have a problem with DHs getting inducted. Perhaps the voters should be a bit more scrutinizing of DH candidates than position players, and maintain a slightly higher standard for their induction.

I personally have a bigger problem with the number of Closers that have been enshrined. There are many more Closers than DHs in the Hall, and I believe the DH position is equally (if not more) important. Just my .02

The first round of testing was supposed to be a blind test to see if there was cause to do more testing in the future. The NY Times leaked some of the results and named Ortiz as testing positive. Ortiz has always claimed that that was a hit piece by the NY media because there were a bunch of Yankees that had also tested positive and no one from Boston. I don't believe he ever admitted to using PED's. The fact that he never tested positive in ALL the years after even as the testing got better and more accurate says to me he either never took PED's or stopped after the league made it illegal. I have a hard time believing that he somehow evaded the hundreds of tests over the years with designer PED's.

Regardless, he's immortalized now and deservingly so. Loved watching him dismantle the Yankees in 2004.

Ain't that the truth. Unofficial rule: character issues only count much for people whose most front page news time was prior to the 1980s. If you were an awful person before that, it often doesn't matter and you are still revered (unless you threw games, bet on ones you managed, or chopped up puppies and kittens).

And I'm not even sure the chopped part would matter.

This rule often applies outside of baseball as well.

Curt Schilling said, “I would rather not be judged by the writers, but by the former players and historians who make up the Hall’s Era Committees. That appears to be the best route to Cooperstown.”

I believe most of us would agree with that. Like many of us who have our own individual personal views, attitudes, and justifications about the PED guys, so do the writer’s, and unfortunately, it’s only their votes that count.

I believe most are smart enough to know that those players we talk about used PEDs (don't need a positive test or a smoking needle to know that), and there are many others that we don’t know about. We don’t know all who used; how much they used, and how long they used; and we will never know. People can put whatever spin they want on it, in order to justify how they see it, but we all know!

With that being said, I have no issues with Ortiz being in the Hall of Fame. Except that I'm a die-hard Yankee fan, so that part hurts.

Papi failed a test. Manfred said it might have been a false positive but that he failed a test is a fact.

If Papi was a disliked guy, like Barry Bonds, writers would've used that test to justify not voting for him. But since hes well liked, enough writers gave him the benefit of the doubt or looked the other way to vote him in.

Writers have proven they cannot be fair and objective. Baseball needs a new voting system.

I agree 100%!!!

Absolutely!

I understand this group mostly "older" HOFers will not be so favorable for Bonds/Clemens/et al....unless they can get Selig, Piazza, Bagwell and othes from that era on the committee I do not think they will get in on this committee for a while.

IMO, it is a Museum and it is lacking without the all-time hit leader, HR leader and Cy-Young winner as electees

Lasltly, Schilling outperforms all the names others placed here by way of 3,000 K's, 3 WS, Bloody Sock and over-all post-season record. During his playing career he was regarded as a great teammate and was recognized for his volunteer work (he won a Clemente award). His post career D-bagness killed his BBWAA possibilities.

Time to move on from this. No amount of postulating from either faction will change the following facts:

Ortiz is in the HOF

Bonds is not in the HOF
Clemens is not in the HOF
Sosa is not in the HOF

Today is a new day, let's focus on who we hate for next years vote. Get an early start as there is plenty of time for it.

Personally I cannot wait until Todd Helton gets voted in. Gonna be a couple of years though. I can wait.......

One thing I believe we all can agree on is this: If a person that is issued a ballot to vote for the HOF and turns in an empty ballot, they should be removed from ever voting again for any further HOF ballots. And frankly if someone cannot muster at least 5 people to vote for, they should just never be able to vote again either. IMHO

Don't know why they even need to keep electing people. At this point just tell the story of baseball, good, bad and ugly, and leave it at that.

The Hall is such an amazing place. A shame that this debate about electing people will never end.

Soon the same debate will continue about guys suspected/charged with domestic abuse or drugs and DWIs or may other things. It's not going away.

Obviously Bonds, Clemens, etc. are the fall guys for an era everyone knew was taking place and looked the other way.

I love it. All the criers on here rooting for the roid boys. I hope they never get in, and all their records should be trashed. Some of you guys must have hundreds of their rookie cards. Tough shit.

Just goes to show if you have a cheese eating grin and a baseball has been berry berry good to me shtick you can go far. Best get him in before he gets shot again.;)

Ortiz couldn't hold Bonds glove or anyone's for that matter. Kid Clank makes Steve Bilko look like a Gold Glover.

Chico Escuela is still not in the HOF. And he should be...... :p

Arod never tested positive either. Those high PEDs were able to avoid detection for years. Not having a positive test means nothing in my opinion.

I am again very blah about the Hall and their decision to continue to rely on electors that try to take moral stances instead of electing Hall of Fame deserving members. I gave up on caring about them forever ago as it is not the Hall of Fame and should be renamed "The Hall of Fairly Good Guys We Like". I will continue to just think it has the same luster now as a Gold Glove and just view this news in passing each year and forget in a month.

If these things still get you excited and happy please enjoy, this is just my opinion.

Ha Ha! How about Joe Shlabotnik?

Agreed. I used to look at the Hall of Fame as a sacrosanct accomplishment for immortals. Now, I just view the Hall for what it really is...an annual media award.

There were HUUUUUGE paper trails for ARod/Bonds/Clemens that doesn't exist for Ortiz. Wish people would admit that.

This coming from a Yankee fan that despised Ortiz when he played.

That said, I'm pretty beyond caring whether most of these guys get in or not. It's not like people are ever going to forget who Bonds / Clemens / ARod / Pete Rose, etc......are.

I prefer seeing the guys who are nearly forgotten by time and fans, get brought back into view to be remembered and celebrated after most people have forgotten who they were, and what they might have accomplished or sacrificed in their careers.

I'll leave it to others to argue whether they "deserve" it or not.

As an aside, I've been to about 20 Boxing Hall of Fame inductions over the years. I gave up being upset about somebody getting in, that I thought didn't "deserve" it, when I saw how much it meant to the families and the many surviving boxers who had been beaten up and forgotten by time.

I'm not going to tell anybody that Harold Baines doesn't "deserve" to be in the HOF, just because Barry Bonds's head swelled to the size of a basketball over the course of his career. :D

If we follow this logic, that we should not discuss things that have happened in the past (including yesterday) because the past cannot be changed, then there would be almost nothing to talk about on a board about old items and baseball history.

I'm not happy with the Baseball HOF but at least they have a process. Don't even get me started on the Rock 'n' Roll HOF! :mad::rolleyes:

"Failing" a test that's riddled with problems and that itself is a failure is a big fat nothing.

https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2022...amer-says.html

From that article
Manfred said it was possible that Ortiz never registered a positive test in 2003 because of the questionable accuracy of those tests. He also said the 2003 testing should not come into play when determining players’ legacies (or Hall of Fame candidacies).

“I think whatever judgment writers decide to make with respect to players who have tested positive or otherwise been adjudicated under our program, that’s up to them,” Manfred said in Oct. 2016. “That’s a policy decision. They’ve got to look into their conscience and decide how they evaluate that against the Hall of Fame criteria. What I do feel is unfair is in situations where it is leaks, rumors, innuendo, not confirmed positive test results, that that is unfair to the players. I think that would be wrong.”

In most real testing programs, there's a backup sample that gets tested once the first one tests positive. That's to protect against lab mistakes. (and has been used years later to prove and retroactively punish doping once a specific test for say EPO becomes available. )

A wildly inaccurate test taken as fact by the NYT with no corroboration and no specifics is essentially worthless. You may as well just measure biceps and call anyone over a certain number a doper.
The real programs like the Olympic and cycling ones will clearly state what was found, and these days often how much it differs from the normal range or if there even is a normal range.

The only player I can't stand of the three is Clemens. I was privileged to have the opportunity to watch Bonds and Ortiz play. Even as a miserable 2004 Cubs fan, I'll never forget watching the 2004 Red Sox/Yankees series in my University of Miami dorm room and the moments provided by how clutch Ortiz was - and those great Joe Buck/McCarver calls.

That being said - at Ortiz's peak, at the pinnacle of his talent and ability, he was still no more than half of the ballplayer that Bonds was at Bonds' lowest ability level during Bonds' career. Before simply disregarding that, think it through. At no point was Ortiz ever even in the same realm as Bonds. Let's say Ortiz didn't do steroids, which is hilarious to believe (and I don't really blame them, can't say I wouldn't do the same thing given choice between meandering amidst a sea of steroid users, or leveling my own playing field - given that MLB didn't care at all), then STILL at no point was Ortiz anywhere near the ballplayer that Bonds was prior to his steroid use.

It's just pathetic, and clearly points to the media's hatred towards Bonds - who always hated them.

Thank you, Jim! Yes, there are VERY few cards of Buck O'Neill, all of them late 1940s Cuban issues. All extremely scarce. I was fortunate enough to acquire this team postcard from a fellow board member, and one of the hobby's top Cuban card collectors.

Now as to Bud Fowler cards... Not so much! I believe there might be ONE extant example of The Page Fence Giants team postcards, dating from the late 1890s. Thus, HOF collectors like myself probably have to be content with modern commemoratives like the 1994 example that I posted. So far, that seems to be the earliest - Fowler doesn't appear in the Laughlin sets issued in the 1970s. I could be wrong about there being anything else, made prior to 1994. I would be curious as to what others know about his cards?

I think your post kind of proves my point, people say the leaked info is flawed when it comes to Ortiz but writers use the same info to justify not voting for less popular players like Sammy Sosa and Carlos Delgado.

Popularity contest. I'll continue collecting cards of the best players, of which Hall membership is not a particularly accurate indicator.

Hell, many of the players being punished by the hall for steroids weren't even breaking any rule at all, test or no test. Andro wasn't banned when McGwire became known to be a user, and yet he, an obviously more deserving candidate than Ortiz, was ignored in the voting.

Ignoring Ortiz' test because it is known from a leak and the appeal and re-test processes wasn't in place (which seems to be what Manfred is actually referring to), while continuing to punish literally every other known user, including players who 1) didn't test positive at all and/or 2) were not even breaking the rules and/or 3) also tested positive in 2003 before the institution of the current procedures takes some truly incredible mental gymnastics to justify the obvious: Ortiz is held to a completely different standard from every other player. Reason should tell this is absurd.

The excuses being made on behalf of Ortiz and others such as Bonds and Clemens are just pathetic in my opinion. As fans and historians of baseball we should have integrity and respect for the game and expect the same from the players. Unfortunately, based on some of the responses I have read online, I am seriously beginning to question the character of the average baseball fan in modern culture.

When Ortiz first spoke publicly about his positive test, his response was "my results leaked because so many Yankees tested positive". Why wasn't his initial reaction to the article to deny that he had ever used PEDs in the first place? No defamation suit? No libel? In my opinion that initial reaction shows guilt, and no amount of walking it back will change that.

Manfred cosigning Ortiz for the Hall is just another blemish to his already questionable tenure as commissioner, and if you don't see the spin he put on this whole situation I'm guessing you've never hit a curve ball.

How does Manfred have a choice?

So, the world you wish to live in is one where a player, gullible enough to accept MLB's (Manfred's) word that a test would be confidential, have no consequences and, therefore, would skip over due-process, would end up "convicted" of a "failed test" and publicly shamed out of consideration for the Hall of Fame. Ortiz and the other players who were "tricked" into agreeing to be tested, participated in a key step toward getting the player's union to support driving steroids out of baseball (for the most part, at least). It seems to me you could replace "gullible" with "courageous" in my first sentence above.

Barry Bonds is king...HOF or not.

Ortiz failed a test. Nothing in your statement changes that fact.

Where was the outrage for the other players who failed in 2003 and are still being kept out of the hall? Ortiz’s actions are now “courageous” while every other roider is still a cheater? When these are the arguments to try and justify the obvious, you know there’s no logical counterpoint.

Wasn't Pedro on the list?

I watched Pedro give an interview when he was trying to sell his book. He openly admitted he and the entire team was on PEDs. It was hilarious because the interviewer was doing everything he could to get Pedro to STFU. Pedro just kept running his mouth about a specific time when the whole team took PEDs together before a playoff game.

Everything I have seen from Pedro is a denial. Odd. I have seen him claim 60 percent of baseball was using, but not an admission about himself, to the contrary.

Where is this video of Pedro admitting to use?

His name, as far as I can tell, was on a 2003 list that appeared on the internet with no sourcing or validation, not the apparently valid leak to the Times that Ortiz’ test became known from.

Can sourcing for these allegations be shared?

Most of the players are tough decisions for me in a few ways.

Sosa, doubled his HR production at an age when many people start slowing down a bit. That's a bit surprising. Then there's the whole idea of comparing him to Maris, who had a similar bump, but only for one year and a bit earlier in his career.

Delgado? I haven't heard any accusations, and his career numbers are pretty consistent. I think he somehow got added to the suspect list when there's really no reason.

Article from a while back critical of Ortiz.

http://archive.boston.com/sports/col...ouble_kee.html