naw...i just did a google image search too and that one came up.

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/01/06/t ... l-of-fame/

this is what i kind of mean, about the HOF now being a joke....albeit, this is a bit more extreme.....my dad agrees with this 100% though...

I honestly don't see how you can say it's not exclusive enough. Only 1% of major league baseball players will make the baseball hall of fame. And, statistically, it has never been harder to get in then it is right now. If you played in the 80's, well, it sucks for you because they almost have no shot. Only 8% of every day players from the 80's will make the hall. Tim Raines, a guy many believe to be the 2nd greatest lead-off hitter of all time, doesn't look like has much of a shot. It sucks he played at the same time as the greatest lead-off hitter of all time.

Every year HOF voters can vote for 10 players. They average voting for 5. Basically, they use only 50% of their ballot. Are there some players who are heads and shoulders above everyone else? Of course. But just because Joe Montana is in the NFL hall of fame, doesn't mean that Drew Brees shouldn't be some day. The likelihood of another Mays is very unlikely. Why does that mean no outfielder should ever make the hall again?

And this quote by the same author you linked is very telling:


But think about that for a second. How many people have played shortstop in MLB ever? Thousands? Only 19 are currently enshrined. That's crazy exclusive by any standard.

It's almost like you think because baseball's golden age is behind it, we should just lock the doors to HOF.

This is a symptom of baseball and its fans, always trying to live in the moment of that one summer, right before senior year of high school when the sun was just right, the girls wore the purtiest doggoned grins and the world was bigger than 16 solar systems all laid out for the taking...

I support Trammell for the hall but I do think he's somewhat borderline and that you do need to compare players with other players from their era rather more so than from other eras. Who is to say what Trammell might have done in the 20's & 30's? Would he have had the same career, been better or not have even played SS? Also, the idea that there are only 19 shortstops enshrined isn't that important to me. How many spot starters/swingmen/mop up relievers are in the hall? Does that mean we should pick the best 20 5th man out of the bullpen guys and enshrine them? SS was a pretty weak hitting position for most of baseball history. I'm fine with there being very few SS in the Hall.

That said, I get the concept of a special wing in the Hall for the truly great but I agree that the fact that there was a Willie Mays doesn't make a Tim Raines less deserving of some recognition. I don't think the Hall is necessarily too big. The comparison problem is more the result of there having been both dumb picks and glaring omissions. That is to be expected though as long as you have people who aren't brighter than the average sportswriter making the decisions.

They're Republicans?

I talk about it all the time, but I fucking love David Maraniss' concept of The Falacy of The Innocent Past.

No, it's more about there being no official guidelines to actually making it....
500 home runs....3000 hits....300 wins..... are current day 'automatics'...
I'm not saying that the doors should be locked....
Maybe there should be different levels....

I think I posted the same exact thing in the 2009 HOF thread.....As impressive as Craig Biggio's career may have been; as HOF worthy his numbers appear to be as compared to greats from the past; i'm sorry but i have an issue with him being declared a contemporary of a Willie Mays, a Babe Ruth, a Ted Williams; a Cy Young, a Micky Mantle.....

I kind of wish that the HOF (instead of 1% of all players making it); .3% made it....I feel it should be for the immortals of the game....

It is almost a popularity contest as well....I'll present the argument for the third time....
Kirby Puckett...Don Mattingly....Keith Hernandez.... you look at the career stats for all three, and they are frightengly similar...yet Kirby went in first ballot, Mattingly is down to less than 25%, and Keith's time has come and gone....I don't buy the fact that Kirby won two WS is what separated him from the other two.....How could the voting be so dramatic?

whatever....it's politics....

Funny, because Keith Hernandez is the position player equivalent of Jack Morris: one of the best players of his era, and a certain hall of famed in my book. Also, dude was the best defensive first bagger of his time, and a champion coke head.

Twilight Kid's main beef with the Hall is that it's not ALL Yankees.

nothing I wrote even began to convey that thought process....










*whether it's true what you said or not!"

I'm not really advocating Trammell or Rains. Just noting how exclusive a club it really is. There is a huge difference between the position of SS and mop-up relievers. SS is one of the most important positions on the field. But I'im not really advocating for more SSs either. I'm just saying it's a very exclusive club, when Trammell a great shortstop can't make it. And it's not like Trammell wasn't appreciated during his era. He was an all-star, World Series MVP, and on every Donruss Diamond Kings set I ever owned. But I totally agree that he's a borderline candidate. That's the whole point. He's got a great resume but he's consider at best a "borderline" candidate by almost everyone. He and Barry Larkin are probably in the best 20 shortstops to ever play the game. That's how exclusive the HOF is. Far from a joke.


Of course there is dumb picks and glaring omissions. Any thing elected by human beings will have them. Nothing is immune to that.

And the old Veterans Committee let way too many people in that shouldn't be in. But all those non-deservers are from like the 40s and TK doesn't know anythign about them. The Veterans Committee doesn't let anyone in.

This is really silly. Biggio is a completely different player than Mantle, Williams, etc.

He was primarily a second baseman. Until the 90s, there weren't a lot of them hitting 40 homeruns and batting .340. He was a top of the order, score runs not drive them in hitter. You've built a a prototype out of the top 10 greatest players to the game as the model of comparison. Few players will ever meet this criteria. If the hall was that tough, we wouldn't elect but 1 maybe 2 players every 10 years. Just silly, sorry.

As far a Kirby Puckett, he was a good defensive CF, which is pretty important (defense at 1B isn't terribly valued). They're aren't many good all-around CFs in the hall. 10 x allstar with 2 gold gloves. Won 2 world series. He was a career 318 hitter to Mattingly's 307. Kirby also had 2,000 hits in 10 years. Only 2 people have done that.

All that said, he's probably not a hall of famer. The thing about Kirby is he was forced to retire because of that eye deal and I think he got a lot of credit for that. But he's a modern outlier in my opinion. I'm not sure you can find a lot of guys who played after 1980 that are in that shouldn't be in.

Actually, it is not silly.

Until there is a set of actual guidelines that the writers need to follow in order to elect people into the HOF, my opinion as well as yours, is just as valid as the 510 some odd writers who actually vote.

Mattingly's career was cut short due to back problems. Also, Kirby Puckett played almost 12 full seasons.....Check out their atbats (very very close)....But there is my point...Puckett is a first ballot hall of famer and Mattingly or Hernandez wasn't even close...I'm curious....did it come out he was a wife beater before or after he was elected, and would that have affected his vote...

Same with Alomar this year...There are two schools of thought (that I have read so far) as to why he wasnt not elected on the first ballot.
1. Some writers didnt he feel he was a first ballot, as that was reserved for immortals only...
2. Some feel he was punished for the 'spitting' incident at the end of his career, so they conspired to make him wait a year....

it's all biased and politics....it's all BS,....but whatever...

And I read this. You realize the author agrees with me and is making a point to all the people who think it has become the Hall of very good.

I understand what happened to Mattingly. But it wasn't the same as a player who had to retire before his career really slid (whether to nagging injuries or not). But I admit that Puckett was a probably an emotional vote for writers. But as I said, he's the outlier not the norm in modern voting. And there will alwasy be mistakes by selections made by humans. No HOF is immune. If it was about politics, Mattingly would be in. Every writer loves him. The pinstripes don't hurt either. That's why it's not all politics.

Part of the problem, I think is that baseball is undergoing a re-evaluation of what is "good." For the first time, people are really using math to look beyond the game and understand it in ways they never did before. The eye-ball test and misleading stats are no longer the sole criteria anymore. Blylevan is the perfect example. He never "smelt" like an HOFer. It's only now people realize that he was great. To the old guard, he's was just "very good" but not great even if the stats say otherwise.

If you put it in hard criteria (I don't see how you can come up with any that exclude 3,000 hit guys like Biggio though), you take away the ability to re-evalute the game or let it naturally evolve. For example, the modern SS is a different animal than a 70s SS. If Ozzie played now, he'd be considered differently because he was not an offensive player. So hard numbers for SS would have changed.

Mattingly won't make the Hall for a pretty simple reason, Dov - he was the best and most famous Yankee during their absolute worst period as a franchise. I think Donnie Baseball was a great player, but the Hall's perceived bias FOR Yankees players actually hurts him in this case.

To me Mattingly and Murphy have the exact same case. They were both awesome for a short period of time, played on crappy teams right before they ascended, both loved for intangibles, and maybe most importantly played in era of low offensive stats just prior to an era of ungodly offensive stats where their stats don't look as good as they actually were.

I don't think Mattingly had a HOF career simply he didn't play at an elite level long enough.....It still comes down to 500+ writers using whatever criteria they feel (at that moment) makes a HOF'er.

We all have our own opinions which are equally right as well as wrong...We could go on forever arguing...We all are basically arguing the same points.

How bout instead, we have a separate room in the Hall for the Immortals...?

I don't think either Mattingly or Puckett deserve to be in. I can see why someone would think Puckett was slightly more deserving. His career numbers are probably a little better and he played a more important position. It's somewhat mitigated by Mattingly having a little higher peak imo but Puckett is probably a little more deserving. If Puckett barely made the hall, I don't think you'd see people as irked by the comparison as him making it first ballot.

I'd throw out Dawson and Catfish Hunter as not being all that deserving either. Rice is borderline too but he doesn't bother me quite as much.

As far as the shortstop question goes, I wasn't trying to argue that a mop up man is as important as a shortstop. I was trying to say for much of history, who your shortstop was about as important as who your mop up man was. It wasn't an offensive position and most teams since they weren't looking for offense could find a good defender. With a few exceptions prior to the 70's, most SS were pretty interchangeable. That's why you don't see a lot of older SS with very high career WAR and why you don't see a lot of in the hall of fame. Trammell absolutely deserves to be in. I just don't find the fact that there are only 20 in the hall all that surprising.

Agreed that SS was not an offensive position. But there was a time, great defenders made the Hall like Brooks Robinson and Ozzie Smith. Which is a lot harder to qualify in numerical value. I wouldn't say SS were interchangeable though.

What about Koufax?

What about him?

Immortal.

I don't have a problem with this. What's the qualification - "first ballot"?

That's a start, although, I forgot where I read it in the last few days, but I think there were a bunch of 'should be immortals' in the 30-40-50's, who didn't get in first ballot (for whatever reason)... Joe Dimaggio was a third ballot entry I believe...

we got some work to do...

Never shoulda married that Communist dame.