After reading 52 (give or take) articles complaining about the Hall of Fame vote I figured I was supposed to do one too. I mean, I'm a blogger and it's the Baseball 'Writers' that vote for the Hall and bloggers are supposed to hate writers and writers are supposed to hate bloggers. But you know, I can't really bring myself to hate them. I'm mean, yeah I'll make fun when I think they are wrong but everyone's wrong some of the time. I've been wrong once or twice myself. There are smart, caring, knowledgeable writers. There are some that writing about baseball is a job and they are bored with it and they wish they could be writing something else. There are bloggers that are great and there are ones that are less good.
Yeah the writers get the vote. Yeah, likely, democracy isn't the perfect system. Sure, one guy that knows what he's doing would be better than would be better than roughly 600 guys all with different agendas voting. But it is the system we got and, really, if we can leave picking our leaders up to a system that allows any idiot to vote, then we can live with this. But then, who is going to be the guy? Bill James? The Hall will be flooded with former Royals. We all have biases
Before the vote was announced, I read several pieces saying that last years election of Jim Rice was the opening of the door to changing the Hall from the Hall of Greats to the Hall of Pretty Goods. Well, guess what? There have been unworthy players put into the Hall for years. Johnny Evers (click on his name for his stats) went into the Hall in 1946. If he's a deserving Hall of Famer, I'm the King of England. Or look at Joe Tinker (who went in the same year). They got into the Hall because of a poem, 'Tinker to Evers to Chance', an ode to smooth doubles plays (Chance is in the Hall too, he was a decent player).
Or look at Paul Waner or Goose Goslin or any of several others. So, really, any guy the Writers vote in now isn't going to ruin the Hall. You don't like Jim Rice in the Hall, next time you go, ignore his plaque, but to pretend he represents a new low bar for the Hall, nah, ain't true.
This time round the complaint is they didn't elect enough players. Well, geeze, make up your minds. If you want to keep the Hall small, some guys you like won't go in. Or maybe they just won't go in the first time. Yeah Alomar should go in, and he will. When he goes in next year, they won't put on his plaque that he went in on his second year.
I've read, several times today, that the Writers are stupid because they didn't vote for Alomar or Blyleven, but that ignores the fact that over 70% of the Writers did vote for them. Yeah 26% didn't but really if 74% of people voted for the same party in the next Federal election, it would be a landslide win. The 26% that didn't had reasons and are allowed them.
There is a lot of scorn directed at a handful of Writers that didn't write any names on their ballots but then why condemn them for setting their bars higher than we would. It isn't like there was a Willie Mays in the group that there should be no doubt about. Some complain about the couple of votes for Dave Segui, but I'm sure those came from people that were friends of Segui and knew he wouldn't make the Hall but wanted to vote for him out of friendship.
I saw the word 'snub' used talking about Alomar's vote several times. Folks, not voting for someone isn't a snub. The writers don't vote against anyone. There is no God given right that a player has to get into the Hall. Someone not getting into the Hall doesn't devalue them as a player.
For me, I feel that Tim Raines is one of the best players I've ever seen play. One of the best players ever. That he didn't get the votes doesn't change my mind or make me wrong or make me remember him differently. Just as there are guys in the Hall I discount, there are players not in the Hall that I think of as some of the greatest all time. Their vote count doesn't change the way I feel about them.
I know I care too much about the Hall, but I can't bring myself to get overly worked up about who gets in each year.