Dan Shaughnessy will see Murray Chass's stupidity, raise him lots more stupidity

I'll bet you thought this blog was dead.  Nope, not yet.  It's dying, true, but it's dying reeeeally slowly.  I don't think I'll stop posting entirely for another 15 years or so.  Anyways, back to the HOF articles, because like I said before, it's the most wonderful time of the year for bad sportswriting.  Apparently Dan saw what Murray did and was like "Fuck that, he's barely even trying.  I can top that in half the word count."

More than a quarter of a century after getting my first ballot,

And around 24 years after I should have stopped getting one,

the Hall of Fame selection progress just keeps getting more challenging.

Each year I say to myself, "How antagonize people who actually use their brains even more than I antagonized them last year?"

Wednesday my ballot will be mailed with boxes checked next to the names of Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, Curt Schilling, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell.

Big ups to him for voting for Raines and Trammell.  Big downs to him for everything else in this article or that he's ever done since entering the workforce.

This means I am not voting for (among others on the ballot), Craig Biggio, Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff, Mike Mussina, Larry Walker, Lee Smith, Carlos Delgado, and Nomar Garciaparra. Oh, and I also am not voting for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Gary Sheffield, Mike Piazza, and Jeff Bagwell.

To be fair about one of my earlier jokes, if he were trying to be even more worthless than Chass in half the words, obviously he wouldn't have bothered to write those sentences.

Six votes. I think it’s a personal high.

OHHHHHH GOOD FOR YOU YOU FUCKING DICKHEAD

Yikes. Imagine going into a seven-game series with a roster of the guys I’m not voting for: Piazza behind the plate. An infield of McGwire, Biggio, Nomar, and Bagwell. An outfield of Bonds, Sosa, and Sheffield. Edgar at DH. Clemens on the mound. Lee Smith in the bullpen. Mussina ready to pitch Game 2. Who wouldn’t take their chances with that team against any team?

Where are you going?  Are you lost?  Do you need help?  Did you actually attend college and take any courses in writing or critical thinking?

So let it rip. Bring on the hate. 

Yeah, I mean, we can't rule out the idea that this is merely a troll act designed to increase pageviews.  (If that is the case, I sincerely hope he put at least Biggio and Mussina on his ballot, if not some of the other deserving guys from his obviously "not steroid users" list above.)

Bring on the humiliation.

Oh, it's here.

Bring on the blogboy outrage. 

Needs more reference to basements and virginity.

Bring on the analytic arrogance. 

"Bring on the people that use numbers to make arguments about how good people were at a quantifiable activity."

Bring on the PED Hall Pass. 

Hall of SHAME if you ask me.

It’s a tradition like no other.

Yes, the Masters Tournament certainly is.

Voting for the Hall is a great privilege. It’s the most important function of the vast lodge

of cuntrags

known as the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Some newspapers don’t allow their writers to vote. 

I have no idea what those papers' logic for that regulation might be, but no matter how misguided, they're probably doing baseball fans everywhere a favor.

Thankfully, the Globe still lets us participate. Still, it has become almost impossible to be consistent with this ballot.

Yeah, if you're a fucking idiot, I agree that it might be hard to apply a consistent standard to guys who all played the exact same game under substantially the exact same rules over time.

Voters in this election are baseball writers who were on the beat for at least 10 consecutive seasons. There are approximately 570 voters. 

HOLY SHIT WE KNOW.  THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR COLUMN.  STOP LISTING FACTS FROM THE BBWA WEBSITE AND GET TO EXPRESSING YOUR OPINION ALREADY.

We are allowed to vote for no more than 10 players. 

Or six, as the case may be.

Players are not eligible until five years after they retire. A candidate must be selected on three-quarters (75 percent) of all votes cast to walk into Cooperstown next July.

Thanks, Wikipedia!

In my view, Pedro, Johnson, Smoltz and Biggio will be announced as new Hall members on Jan. 6.

Which is exactly why he CAN'T vote for Biggio.

None will be unanimous. No one has ever been a unanimous selection. You cannot get 570 baseball writers to agree that the earth is round. 

Because at least twenty of them legitimately don't understand that fact.  IF IT'S ROUND WHY DON'T WE FALL OFF OF IT?????

Since no one has been elected unanimously, some voters withhold to keep that stupid record intact. 

If you're wondering whether he'll explain why he's not voting for Biggio, don't worry, he will, and it's awesome.

Brother Bob Ryan addressed this thinking nicely in a Nov. 30 Globe column. Look it up.

No thanks!

So don’t expect Pedro to be unanimous. 

WHAT?  FACK YOU!  FACK THE YANKEES!  GO PATS!

His win total of 219 (accompanied by a mere 100 losses) will put off some voters, but Pedro (three Cy Young awards) should come in well north of 90 percent. Johnson is a 300-game winner (always Hall-worthy, unless you cheated), won five Cy Youngs, and ranks second lifetime in strikeouts (behind Nolan Ryan). Johnson is a lock. Smoltz gets in because he’s the only pitcher with 200 wins (213) and 150 saves (154) and he went 15-4 in the postseason. 

Totally fair.  Of course Mussina's 270 wins, a 123 ERA+ and 83 WAR (one fewer than Pedro, and more than Ryan or Tom Glavine) gets left out, but he'll cover that with spectacular idiocy below.

Biggio missed by only two votes last year. He has 3,000 hits, four gold gloves, and almost 300 homers. I would put him in the Hall of Very Good (only one 200-hit season), 

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That's great.  Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron?  Three 200 hit seasons a piece.  I guess those two extra seasons where they exceeded a totally unimportant threshold that Biggio only exceeded once are the difference between being among the best ever and being in the Hall of Very Good.  On the other hand, Beantown legend Carl Yastrzemski NEVER had a 200 hit season.  Neither did Eddie Mathews or the greatest leadoff hitter of all time, Rickey Henderson.  REVOKE THEIR ADMISSION, BWAA.  HAVE YOU NO SHAME?

but that won’t matter. He’s going in. This year.

In spite.  Of my assholish.  Refusal to vote for him.

Raines and Trammell are problematic and I am guilty of inconsistency with their candidacies.

That's OK, Dan.  Even Mother Teresa wasn't perfect.

Raines was a rare combination of power (170 homers) and speed (808 steals). He had six 100-run seasons. Trammell is going to be off the ballot soon, and won’t make the Hall with the BBWAA, but there’s lots of value in a shortstop who hit .300 seven times, won four Gold Gloves, and should have been MVP (he lost to George Bell) in 1987.

Bringing up the MVP reminds me of that great post the other FJM did about Colin Cowherd yelling that anyone who won that award even once should be in the hall.

Schilling also is borderline. He won 216 games compared with 270 for Mussina. But Schill gets this vote because he went 11-2 in the postseason and was one of the great strike machines in baseball history. Who would you want on the mound in a big game — Mussina or Schill?

I know, right?  You can't vote for both.  It's not allowed.  Meanwhile, to answer that question, I dug around and found this one time that they opposed each other as starting pitchers.  Who would you have wanted on the mound in that game?  I have no clue what happened in their other matchups (if other matchups exist), but I think this one game sample answers the question for me.

The Roids Boys are the greatest burden on voters. 

Oh, woe is you!  Such a burden!  Keep pushing that rock up that hill, Sisyphus!

Some voters don’t care. Some cherry-pick the cheaters. 

You mean like if they wanted to vote for Bonds, because he was one of the best ever, but not for Sosa, because he really wasn't all that great?  How dare they!

Some turn away from anything that even looks dirty.

Like you, by designating Bagwell and Piazza as cheaters!

Withholding votes for guys who cheated and guys who look like they cheated is unfortunate, sometimes unfair, and almost impossible to impose consistently.

This is correct.  He has walked to the door of logic that has awareness and enlightenment on the other side.  All he has to do to pass through is realize that since it's so hard to impose this kind of thing consistently, maybe you should just vote for the guys who have HOF numbers and not vote for the guys who don't.  Unfortunately, he can't find the knob.

Objection to the Roids Boys is gradually eroding. As years pass and new voters replace older voters, it is likely there will be increased leniency. Each year there are more voters who don’t care about PEDs. The thinking becomes, “This was the era. They were all doing it.’’ Or, “Bonds and Clemens were already Hall of Famers before they started cheating.’’

The first one of those two justifications is flippant and not a great way to go about making voting decisions (although is also a truism that shouldn't be ignored).  The second one of those two justifications is a perfectly good way to go about making voting decisions, and it would be great if mouth breathers like Dan used it.

Sorry, I am not there. No votes for guys caught using. 

Fine, but Bagwell and Piazza--

And worse — no votes for guys who just don’t look right. Bagwell and Piazza are the two players most penalized for this arbitrary crime. By any statistical measurement, Bagwell and Piazza are first-ballot Hall of Famers, yet their vote totals (62 percent for Piazza last year, 54 percent for Bagwell) remain considerably lower than their résumés merit.

Thanks to shiteaters like you.

This was a lot more fun when it was just Trammell vs. Biggio, Schilling vs. Mussina, or Jim Kaat vs. Don Drysdale. When it was about baseball.

Yeah!  Who in the world ever decided to make it about something other than baseball????  Could it be... the moralizing chodes in the BWAA?  Why yes, I think that might be correct!

At this point in writing this article, I guess he realized that some kids were playing on his lawn, so he decided to wrap it up rather abruptly.

Happily, none of the bad stuff ever touched Pedro. Long after the votes are counted and the arguments subside, Cooperstown in July is going to be a Boston baseball party.

And there you go.  That's the only conclusion you get, dedicated Shaughnessy readers.  I'm glad we settled the whole steroid user/suspected steroid user debate though.  That was fun.

Six votes!  A personal record!  Good for Dan.