I am in possession of the toxic ballot.
It is the Hall of Fame ballot voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) have dreaded for the last five years. Our feet are finally being held to the bonfire. How will we as a body judge the candidacy of the all-time home run leader, the only man to win seven Cy Young Awards, and a man with 609 career home runs who is the only person to homer 60 times or more in three seasons?
Comments
I don't think they should ever get in, but certainly not in their first year of eligibility!
Why does anyone have to get in ? Why cannot there be some years when there is no worthy candidate ? Actually there should be. The Hall of Fame has been discounted by the need to admit players. The Hall of Famers should be the best of the best of the best. The bar shuld be set very high.
This is athletic McCarthyism. We live in a country where you're innocent until proven guilty. IMO you have to let them all in PEDs or not. You had Major League Baseball not having any specific rules about steroids. You had baseball's tacit, no actively looking the other way, acquience to the issue. So any journalist should take their moral outrage and put it on the back burner. Let's say over 50% of the players took PEDs or drugs in baseball. The "playing field" was level then. Great baseball athletes on PEDs certainly perform better than average ones. So put the great ones in the Hall if their playing resume dictates.......
Bob, I couldn't agree with you more. Bonds , Clemens, Sosa, have no business in the Hall of Fame. I hope the rest of the writers see it your way as well.
Great article bob- agree 100% and kudos for telling us outright how you feel. Listen people - at least 65% of the players were using Peds and ill guarantee you that more players than Pete Rose have betted on games. "I plead the 5th", "no habla espanol", "I have never used steroids (finger waiving)" are all the evidence (as if the physical changes of each were nt enough) you need to make a logical assumption. Bottom line is we'll never know all who used Peds but we know enough about these frauds to hold them back from the hof.
According to your bio, you never covered the Red Sox or MLB except as a general sports columnist. Why are you allowed to vote for the HoF? Shouldn't this be reserved for those with more expertise? My understanding is that you'll be entitled to vote for the rest of your life. Maybe an overhaul of the HoF selection process is in order.
You get my vote, too. Mark Fairanu's book convinced me. I cannot consider any of those PED guys as hall of famers
Fainaru is a journalistic leech of the worst kind. He's become a millionaire over innuendo and the mining of sleaze. Even if every word of what he's written is true, and that's certainly not the case, his approach to the BALCO case was no better than the paparazzi who take telephoto pictures of Royalty in compromising positions. So for the commenter who became convinced that the PED baseball stars don't belong in the Hall of Fame, that logic is lost on me. The sanctimonious moralism just doesn't work for me. Bob Ryan is just another in a long line of muckraker journalists who place their own values above the sport as it was during the Steroid Era. Give it a rest.