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.