Quote:
Originally Posted by bounce
I don't believe election to the HOF matters for Bonds or Clemens, and it won't matter for Arod, either. I also don't believe that subsequent election will change anything on their cards other than potentially a very short term bump due to uneducated buyers assuming that it would permanently move their markets higher.
Collectors generally don't care about this anymore, especially considering how watered down the baseball HOF has now gotten, not to mention the hypocrisy of election of suspected PED users already.
If you don't believe me, go back and look at Pete Rose card prices and tell me that the HOF is holding them back?
And we all saw the Joe Jackson CJ last night in Heritage.
These three are all-time greats, HOF election or not. They should have been elected with Ortiz and Schilling to make up the "asterisk class", but the writers were too short sighted to see that was actually the best answer for everyone involved - players, fans and writers.
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The value of cards and items is not just strictly tied to their actual sports achievements alone, especially in today's world where everything seems to be driven more by social media, so-called influencers, and the like. The stories and background of many players far exceed their on-field acts, and drive the prices of their cards. In many cases, it is probably better to be infamous, rather than just famous. For example, would anyone really be that interested in any of the Black Sox players (besides Jackson), and pay as much as they do for them if they hadn't been part of the scandal? And speaking of Jackson, he'd likely be in the HOF if not for the scandal, but not necessarily as an elite top tier HOFer, and certainly no one would be paying anywhere near the kind of prices they pay for his cards today. I doubt he'd have even made the inaugural HOF class.
With the records and achievements of players like Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, and so on, over time I can see more and more people who weren't around during their playing days actually forgetting about all the arguments and debate over what they did or didn't do, and actually start embracing cards and items of theirs as its own separate branch or niche of our hobby. Kind of like being seen as the unjustly persecuted few off baseball. There's always a significant portion of the public that seems to have a strange fascination and attraction to the perceived rebels and "bad boys" that are out there. And they won't be so harsh to judge the alleged, or otherwise, PED or 'roid users, especially in light of the indifference and blatant hypocrisy shown by MLB when faced with other cheating incidents and scandals, such as what the Astro's pulled, but for which it seems no player really received any deserved punishment.
I can even imagine and foresee that one day some current HOF voters may be viewed on a par with Joseph McCarthy, and the way his accusations and allegations of people being Communists was initially embraced, and how the accused were punished and ostracized for it. But that over time, as more information came forth, and more intelligent and clearer thinking heads prevailed, a lot of what he originally said and did has been abandoned, if not outright condemned as wrong.
Now don't any of you come back with the stupid jokes and comments because I mentioned McCarthy and Communists, I'm not comparing Bonds, Clemens and others to being Russian or Chinese spies. I'm merely showing the the potential parallels between the two situations, and how over time thinking and public opinion can dramatically change. So no juvenile comments or crap please!