the whole not letting anyone be unanimous thing is so ridiculous and embarrassing.

a list of all the HOF members, and click on the % ranking to see ridiciulousnessnesnsns

http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof.shtml

Yerah, Alomar gets in. He wasn't a first balloter because of the spitting incedent.

Dawson and no Murphy is stupid.

Jack Morris apparently was in the eye of the beholder. Let's just say this, he was a Bird type competitor and the only thing eventful about Blyleven was his I Heart to Fart shirt.

Larkin should probably be in, and I definitely think Trammell should be. Rock Raines was a homeless man's son's retarded cousin's Rickey Henderson, and a dude who slid head first so he wouldn't break the smeb pipes in his back pocket -- he should have been a first ballot guy.

DHR - I assume you are talking Edgar Martinez? I think he will be a veteran's committee selection when the taint of being pretty much only a DH wears off. Dude could ROPE, though.

I think there is too much money to be made with HOF merch, the museum, etc...Therefore, every year, with the exception of I think twice in the last 40 years, they are kind of forced to elect someone into the Hall to be able to make a big event weekend out of the deal.

I looked at the list of the 'voted' inductees over the last several years, and there are a few who I think are no-brainers, the majority DO NOT BELONG in the same building with a Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, etc....

If some of these guys are deemed Hall Worthy, then there should be a seperate wing of the HOF for the real immortals....not to single out a particular player or anything, but a gary carter who had a great career and was one of the best at his position during hi era, is simply not a peer of Yogi Berra. Kirby Puckett had a nice solid career worthy of praise, but should not be an equal of a Willie Mays.

We are voting in people to keep the machine running....Ripken, Henderson, Gwynn are the only in the last few years who i think should be mentioned with the same names as the past...

Larkin is really really borderline but I gotta say no on him.

They went through the numbers on all these borderline guys on Chris Russo's show the other day: highly entertaining.

Ripken? Come the fuck on. Without that meaningless streak and his good guy image he never sniffs the Hall.

What about Maddox, Randy Johnson, Bonds and A. Rod? I think they would be ballers in any era.

While I tend to agree we have sort of diverted into a "Hall of Really Good" I also think that your post reeks of The Fallacy of the Innocent Past -- I bet you'd vote for Thurmon Munson. What to do about a guy like Don Drysdale? Or even Koufax?

A Rod is a Hall of Fame bun boy that is for sure. BLECH.

Maddox, Johnson should be no brainers...

As for Ripken, I hear ya....Take a way the streak, and in my eyes he falls into the category as I explained before. Great numbers, great career. premeire guy of his generation, but 'immortal'? probably not....

As for guys like Bonds and A.Rod...tough call...

one thought keeps coming back to me....There are a ton of guys who have taken steroids, and it did nothing to help their hitting or career. They got bigger, but still couldn't hit worth a lick.....

Then there are guys like Bonds and A.Rod, and even McGwire, who had the talent and were on their way to HOF careers, before they decided to 'Hulk' up.... I think I'd vote them in...make em wait a few years to sweat it out, but in the big picture, these guys were easy to believe to be in the same league as the immortals.

The difference between Bonds and McGwire is that Bonds was a HoF'er before he (allegedly) started juicing. McGwire was pretty much a one trick pony who may have been juicing his entire career.

Munson, no....Yankee HOF? Sure! Plaque in Centerfield? No doubt... HOF, no....
Drysdale is tricky...He certainly put up tremendous numbers over a long period of time, and his career era remained under 3. I don't think he did it long enough....
Koufax..same deal....HOF numbers no doubt, no long enough....Veterans vote? no sleep lost on my part. same for Drysdale...

As for Innocent Past, the best example for me personally is Mattingly....I do not think he is a HOF'er based on his stats alone...He put up HOF numbers for only 5 of his 13 year career..Injury did him in and ruined his shot....My argument though is Kirby Puckett who had frighteningly similar numbers to Mattingly and was first ballot....I don't give a fuck that Kirby played on two world series teams...that is not mattingly fault that he wasn't surrounded by a team that could get to the post-season...and Kirby was a fucking wife beater..so, if Kirby who was not a HOF'er can get in, first ballot no less, then Mattingly should have been in by now..

McGwire during his rookie season, when he hit 49 home runs, was a twig....He was less than half the size than he was during his 'peak' years....

Bonds was a no brainer....But he too.....doubled in size over the course of his career....

I disagree with the notion that the Hall has been devalued in terms of the quality of their members. It still represents only the 1% of people who have played professional baseball.

Since they changed the rules for the veteran's committee, it's gotten harder not easier to make the hall. Fact is - if you played in the 30's, you had a better chance to make the hall than if you played in the 80s or 70s.

I think some of the voting stuff is ridiculous, but I think more often than not, the sportswriters get it right.

Mattingly had serious sideburn issues, wasn't a team player and refused to work with Old Man Burns.

I think Tom Verducci made an excellent point about Byleven in his article this morning - in Byleven's prime he was javier vasquez. Very good, bounced around to different teams, but no team's bonified ace.

He also made another interesting point that dovetails with this discussion on the quality of the Hall. That the door is closing on 80's players and none of the top-5 pitchers with the most wins from the decade will get in.

Oh no you din-nent.

Cal Ripken had better stats than Ozzie Smith, so what he doesn't get in the Hof either? Come on. Best SS of that generation, and while The Streak is a factor, he was still a dominant defensive player. You can't only elect on the merits of his offensive output, which admittedly were lowly in the BA dept. He still had 432 HRs and over 3,000 hits though which is an old-school indicator.

Sure, I'm biased because I'm a Baltimore boy, but saying he doesn't even sniff the hall without The Streak? You're discounting a lot of things, like his two MVP awards, his ROY, 19 All-Star game appearances, 8 silver sluggers, etc.


As for McGwire--I think Jayson Stark made a good point when he said that when he was healthy his stats were monstrous, and better than the so-called "sure" shots of players today. Personally, I'm a purist, so I would never vote in Bonds or McGwire (or Sosa for that matter) because of the scandals. If you elect them in, you better open the door to Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose.

1. First of all, total misnomer that steroids only make you "big".

2. Look at McGwire's rookie card, he's not a twig by a long stretch. Dude was 6'5 and probably 220-225. At his biggest I bet he weighed about 250-255.

I'm not anti-scandal, so I'd let both Joe & Pete in. It's sort of ironic, but exclusion is making these guys more legendary than they probably actually were. How many of us know a lot of players from Shoeless Joe's era? I might be able to name 5-10. Might.

I've thought about that. What if you put a stud like Pujols up against Cy Young? Ty Cobb vs. the Big Unit? Only for the imagination to design, but it makes a healthy argument for judging solely on what generation a player played in.

I generally feel that you need to put both Bonds and McGwire into the HOF with an asterisks by their name or establish a record book for pre and post-steroid era records.
I'm a bit more lenient toward McGwire being a Cards fan and due to the fact that he plead the fifth and got out of the league before testing/suspensions became the norm. He was also a hardcore advocate and publicly stated he used Creatine and Androstenedione back in the late 90's.
I don't really equate steroid use during an era it wasn't officially banned with throwing a World Series in 1919 or gambling/lying about gambling on your sport and your own team.
Both College Football and the NFL seemed to be able to get over their Steroid eras without much fanfare and challenges to the legitimacy of records during that era, so I don't really get why the MLB hasn't properly addressed it yet.

Because in my mind, in football, it was probably more accepted that players juiced.

& still is. Football has never gotten past its steroids era. Sure, nobody's going the way of Lyle Alzado, anymore -- that we know about -- but, come on...

So, I really hope you don't also agree with LooGAR on Morris, since his WS wins are one of the main arguments (on the part of Loog) for Jack's Hall admission. OHG HEG A WINNGERG.

True, but NFL fans are much more open to seeing a star player get a four game suspension and don't usually discount records set by players during the Lyle Alzado to Tony Mandarich era. Also the National Football League itself never promised players their positive test results would remain anonymous in order to find out how rampant steroid abuse was and to satisfy a congressional inquiry.