Baseball Hall of Fame Vote

[Chris-Counts]

"To the guy who wrote about wanting to see more players instead of less in the hall, doesn't that water down the HOF? Shouldn't only the top players make it instead of just average players?"

Pete, As far as I can tell, there are no "average" players in the Hall of Fame, unless they got there for something else. There are a couple dozen players, though, who were essentially excellent players, but not worthy of being in the Hall of Fame. Most of these guys played in the 1920s and 1930s, and many were friends or teammates of Frankie Frisch, who played a key role in their election. So adding post-WWII players who were as good or better than these borderline inductees does nothing to dilute the existing standards of the Hall of Fame.

More importantly, in my mind, is the need for baseball to engage future generations of fans. A huge part of baseball's charm and popularity is its rich and colorful history. Baseball fans love to compare their heroes with those of earlier eras.

How do you explain to the casual fan — who's already saturated with news of steroid scandals, ownership scandals and a bumbling troll of a commissioner — that his heroes or his dad's heroes, guys like Tony Oliva, Dick Allen, Minnie Minoso, Luis Tiant, Alan Trammell, are not worthy of being in the Hall of Fame, but Ross Youngs, Highpockets Kelly, Dave Bancroft, Travis Jackson, Chick Hafey, Jesse Haines are good enough? To the casual fan who looks at the numbers, it just looks like incompetence or cronyism (which it basically is). Hardly the stuff that makes new fans want to learn more about the game's history — or care about its future ...

Now how is it that Jim Rice isn't worthy of being in the Hall of Fame? His stats look a heck of lot more impressive when you take away the steroid-induced stats that followed his career. I watched a lot of baseball in the 1970s and I'm not convinced there was a hitter in that decade that pitchers feared more. His OPS, by the way, is slightly higher than Reggie Jackson's. Nobody questions Reggie's merits. Just the same way nobody would ever question Roberto Clemente's merits, even though Minoso — who people will argue against all day long — has a higher OPS AND was likely as good a fielder ...