Baseball Hall of Fame Voting

The results are in and the Baseball Writers Association of America has inducted a solitary player to be enshrined Baseball's Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York.

Baseball is ridiculous in its stinginess to recognize the players who make the game a game.

Rich Gossage (466 votes - 85.8%) was elected.

Jim Rice (392 72.2%), Andre Dawson (358 65.9%), Bert Blyleven (336 61.9%), Jack Morris (233 42.9%), Alan Trammell (99 18.2%), Tim Raines (132 24.3%), and Don Mattingly (86 15.8%), are all players I think should be elected, but failed to get enough votes. Perhaps they will be elected will be next year.

Tim Raines is a marginal call because he was implicated in the cocaine scandal of the 1980s (when we were all caught-up in the cocaine frenzy of the 1980s). Still, his numbers are impressive and I have always been a fan.

Dave Concepcion (88 16.2%), shortstop for Cincinatti's Big Red Machine of the 1970s has exhausted all eligibility and must now wait until the Veterans' Committee approves his enshrinement, which I think they will.

Lee Smith, Tommy John, Dave Parker, Dale Murphy, and Harold Baines, also received votes, and I have mixed feelings about their place in the game's history. Parker was also implicated in the 1980s cocaine scandal.

Mark McGwire (128 23.6%) should not even be on the ballot, if Pete Rose and Joe Jackson are not on the ballot. Here's a guy who used steroids and no matter his heart-felt, neo-liberal testimony to Congress, should be banned from the Hall as long as the ridiculous morals clause is in effect.

Why the baseball hall of fame, which includes such morally upstanding citizens as Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Mickey Mantle, even has a morals clause is beyond me! You can be a drunken, racist, womanizer, but you better not have gambled. What?!?!?!?

First-time candidates receiving less than the 5% needed to remain on the ballot include Rod Beck (2), Travis Fryman (2), Robb Nen (2), Shawon Dunston (1), Chuck Finley (1), David Justice (1), Chuck Knoblauch (1), Todd Stottlemyre (1), Jose Rijo (0), and Brady Anderson (0). I am sad to see Todd Stottlemyre receive such little support. The hard-working, good-looking pitcher for the Blue Jays and Athletics was a work-horse and deserved more than a single vote.

Baseball should do away with the non-baseball criteria for being in the hall of fame. The hall is run by Dale Petroskey, one of the most immoral, unAmerican people to walk the sidewalks of New York, and if scum like him is associated with the hall, then a simple drug user should be allowed to associate with the hall, too.

Hall welcomes Gossage into its doors

After Hall of Fame Snub, Tim Raines’s Numbers Bear a Closer Look



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