[Cozumeleno]

I might killed for this, but here goes.

To be honest, I think the Hall is already diluted. I'm fully aware of the small % of all players that are in, but when I hear names like Bert Blyleven, Goose Gossage, etc., I just roll my eyes. These were very good (I mean, really, really good) players, but among the best ever? To be honest, I could go up 2-3 levels of guys ahead of them and question that they belong. If it were up to me, the Hall would be like 100-150 guys.

It gets to a point where you say enough is enough. To me, you can't stay on a ballot for years and have voters lobbied into voting for them so much that they ultimately get in. When I hear some of these guys doing interviews and essentially politicking to get in, it makes me sick.

You'll never get 100% of the people to agree on everything 100% of the time, but I'd much rather have a really exclusive Hall built solely of guys that are the slam dunks. If voters have to think about it, I'm not sure you should really be in. If voters spanning several years or in this case, decades, have to think of it, I'm almost positive your exclusion won't be the end of the world.

On guys like Dahlen, I'm not going to fault the committee. Yes, I want them to give players from that era equal consideration. But these are hardly the first guys voters to leave them out. I have a really hard time shaking my first at these guys who are in the majority of voters coming down on that side.

To Dahlen specifically, I can see how people think he should be in. That's particularly true if you measure him against several of the players already in and consider his stats at the time he retired. The problem, though, is that the longer this goes on, the lower the standards become. If he's been on the fence this long and so many voters have passed him up, it comes to a point where I'm not sure you belong. If he got in, I'd be fine with it. But it's just one of those situations where I have a hard problem getting that worked up over it.