Ok....what 3 pre-war HOF'ers would you boot out?

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Posted By: Paul

I don't think the new committee has overreacted. What has happened is that the entire structure of the committee has changed. The old committee was a group of 12 guys who met together. They could decide AS A GROUP what to do. If they thought three guys should get in one year and zero guys the next, they could do that. More importantly, if one persuasive member of the committee felt that George Kelly belonged, he could persuade his colleagues in person, and perhaps even offer to support Rube Marquard in exchange.

The new committee does not meet together. They don't decide anything as a group. They vote as 90 or so independent people. This makes it much harder to vote anybody in, even without a conscious decision by all 90 members to make election harder. It's just the nature of the system. 90 people won't agree on anything unless they all meet together and come up with a plan of whose turn it is this year.

Actually, I shouldn't say that they won't agree on anything. They'd vote in Ruth, Mays, etc. But we are now dealing with candidates who are right on the borderline. Some may be deserving, but they are still on the borderline. And to get 90 people to agree on which borderline candidate to elect this year without coordinating their votes in advance is real tough.