As the years go by, the debate over who belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame often is less heated than the argument over who deserves to elect them.
It’s a fair question, though you shouldn’t expect things to change any time soon.
The membership of the Baseball Writers Association of America has been the sole “deciders” since the first election for the class of 1936.
The rules for membership are more liberal than they once were, but basically you either have to cover baseball, be a general sports columnist or serve as the sports editor at a newspaper, or cover baseball for a website the BBWAA has approved. This month, the BBWAA voted to allow writers from MLB.com websites to join their organisation, which has seen recent membership drops because of the decline of newspapers.
The votes have been cast for the 2016 election, and the announcement will be made tomorrow. Then everyone can criticise the voting, a traditional unlike any other.
Some believe broadcasters who cover teams on a daily basis and Hall of Famers themselves should be granted votes, which does make sense. But there has been no groundswell to open up the voting to outside members, and the Hall of Fame actually decreased the number of eligible BBWAA voters last year.
Until this election, if you had 10 consecutive years of BBWAA membership, you earned the right to vote for the Hall till death do you part. But last year the Hall of Fame changed the eligibility requirements to weed out members who no longer cover the sport and have not for many years. Now voters must be or have been an active baseball writer for at least 10 years before the date of the election in which they are voting.
Those who retired longer than a decade ago or moved on to another writing position either didn’t apply or were rejected by the Hall last summer. Some friends and colleagues were tossed aside, and some did not go quietly into the night.
I understood their pain, but generally agreed with the concept of contraction, knowing some members far removed from the job probably don’t pay as much attention to the game as a Hall of Fame vote merits.
Still, there should be exceptions for those who retire as baseball writers after spending years on the job. Jerome Holtzman, the late Hall of Fame writer for the Tribune and Sun-Times, spent the final years of his life as MLB historian. If these rules were in effect then, the man who created the save rule eventually would have lost his vote.
Either way, the first election under the new BBWAA voter eligibility rules should provide some interesting fodder, especially if Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens make significant jumps in their fourth year on the ballot. Obviously Bonds and Clemens are two of the best players ever, and the only obstacle standing in their way is their association with performance enhancing drugs.
Older BBWAA voters supposedly are more adamant about voting against PED users than the younger ones, so if a sufficient number of their votes are eliminated, Bonds and Clemens should benefit. There were 549 ballots cast last year, and we soon will see if the elimination of a few dozen voters makes a big difference.
At the very least, it should put Bonds and Clemens in better position for future elections.
The stigma of being a PED user appears to be fading, as evidenced by Mark McGwire and Bonds serving as hitting coaches and Manny Ramirez becoming the Cubs’ hitting consultant. The most recent PED scandal, known as Biogenesis, netted Alex Rodriguez and Nelson Cruz, both of whom served suspensions.
But Rodriguez was part of Fox Sports’ postseason telecasts, while Cruz was invited on an MLB trip to Cuba last month. All is forgiven, apparently.
With the elimination of many voters, we also may find out if it means the end of the “vanity” vote, where writers cast votes for players for reasons only they know, even if the player obviously does not have the credentials to make it past one year on the ballot, let alone be elected.
Players who received at least one vote over the last five years include Aaron Boone, Tom Gordon, J.T., Snow, Shawn Green and Brad Radke (two apiece), Darin Erstad, Kenny Rogers, Jacque Jones, Armando Benitez, Aaron Sele, Javy Lopez, Eric Young, B.J. Surhoff, Benito Santiago and Bret Boone.
Some of them may belong in the Nice Guys Hall of Fame, but none deserves a Hall of Fame vote. When those kind of players show up in the final tally, it’s easy to see why some want to change the process.