The latest from Howard Bryant on the Baseball Hall of Fame's ongoing debate about its induction process. Howard is defending the status quo because, well, because... the sun keeps rising. Most of it is a long explanation, but it breaks down when Howard tries to get specific:
Those results were the break from baseball's history. Instead of horrible injustice or gross negligence, Alomar fared no worse and much better than other great players. Here, for posterity, is a short list of players not elected on the first try: Cy Young (511 wins), Joe DiMaggio, Eddie Collins (3,315 hits), Jimmie Foxx, Whitey Ford, Eddie Mathews, Rogers Hornsby, Robin Roberts and Roy Campanella. Yogi Berra (67.2 percent in 1971) was not a first-ballot inductee.
1. Cy Young did not make the first ballot because HE WAS ON THE FIRST BALLOT. Howard, you can't throw these names in there with no context.
2. It's an absolute crime that, somehow, the 1955 BBWAA elected a man with an 82 OPS+, 28 career home runs and unspectacular fielding stats over Joe Fucking DiMiaggio.
3. Robin Roberts did lose 245 games, including an abysmal 1961 season which MIGHT rank as the worst-ever season by a Hall of Fame pitcher. It's not like his numbers make him some kind of guaranteed first-ballot lock!
Alomar cannot claim superiority over anyone on that list. Each was eventually inducted, and the free world survived.
QED! The status quo should never be changed!
Also, Howard printed this:
During college football's biggest week, the start of the NFL playoffs and the week of the Winter Classic, the hottest topic in sports was the Baseball Hall of Fame and who would be worthy of enshrinement.
Really?
By Howard's logic blacks should still be slaves and women not get the right to vote. It's tradition!
ReplyDeleteThe other thing Howard failed to understand is that nowadays, so much more information is available at the click of a button. The lack of effort by the writers to avail themselves of knowledge smacks of the worst kind of hubris. Nowadays people expect guys to go in on first ballot because the easy access to information, cable television, Extra Innings packages, have all made the fact that Robbie Alomar is a HoF 2nd baseman so freaking obvious that even sportswriters should be able to see it. So fuck you Howard Bryant and all the other fucking cocknockers out there who piss on their responsibility to be informed and not treat their vote as a god damned joke. If you don't want to do your job right, then stop doing it. Let someone else who has half a clue do it while you go praise the grit of Eckstein and the winning attitude of Rabbit Maranville.
I will say that I'm a HoF by position advocate, and that not nearly enough 2nd basemen, shortstops, 3rd basemen and catcher have been elected to the HoF. Outfielders and firstbasemen are suppossed to be the best hitters, because their sample size based on defensive needs is huge in comparison to other positions.
I love how he uses the best evidence AGAINST the current HOF voting process (i.e. Berra, Jimmie Foxx, etc. not making the HOF on their first ballot) as evidence that the voting process is okay.
ReplyDelete"I don't see what the big deal is with me using leeches on my patients to cure their cancer. William Shakespeare had to deal with bleeding and he turned out okay, don't you think?"
"HOF voting has always been stupid and unfair. Why change now?"
ReplyDeleteCan't argue with that logic, I guess.
Somehow I think Howard is anti-blacks-being-slaves....can't put my finger on why. But boy does he think that Barry Bonds guy was treated unfairly!
ReplyDeletehttp://firejaymariotti.blogspot.com/2007/12/will-people-please-stop-saying-barry.html
I really need to learn HTML.....just click the Howard Bryant tag, and you'll see......
ReplyDeleteTwo people including your boy Jay left their ballots blank this year. The other person has never voted for anybody, ever.
ReplyDeleteAlso, David Segui received one vote and Eric Karros received two.
Karros had a 107 career OPS+, played fourteen season, collected nearly 1,725 hits and 285 taters (1,724 and 284 to be exact). Add in his 30 stolen bases and the fact that he did all of this as a first baseman, and you have to wonder what everyone else was thinking leaving him off thier ballot.
ReplyDelete