Some drunks, some cocaine addicts, some speed freaks, some suspected PED abusers…they’re all in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. For years this writer has maintained that baseball is not a moral arbiter. It has never been in this conscious thought that Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Fergie Jenkins among many others are a better person than I. Grover Cleveland Alexander was a mess of a human being…but they could all play the grand old game better than I ever dreamed of. As we get older we should shake off the shackles of media and self imposed idealism. The drugs have changed not the morals. Ballplayers have tried to get the edge from the time that Alex Cartwright laid down the foul lines. I don’t understand the outrage. If you believe no one belonged in the Hall last year, do you think that means the years 1980-2010 just didn’t exist? Then, if that’s the case how can a person justify anyone making the Hall of Fame? So, stripping away the faux hypocrisy that baseball writers and ESPN put out there this should be the Hall of Fame inductees of 2014.
Barry Bonds: For years we heard ‘he was a Hall of Famer before the steroids’…then shut up and put him in. The writers that tut tut now over his specter, voted him as MVP 7 times 4 maybe 5 after the steroid suspicion. Being a moral high judge now is too late, and we know in two years after he’s been retired the writers will put the real pervert of the steroid era Bud “Chicks dig the Long Ball” Selig in. So if you’re going to love on the guy who gave at minimum, his tacit okay, why punish the player(s) that excelled under said system.
Roger Clemens: He too may have benefited from PED’s but he did not win 350 games from steroids alone. This was a guy who knew how to pitch. And again calling out the hypocritical nature of the writers, 6 Cy Young Awards and an MVP. He was good enough when he played (and you knew he was on something cuz you said so so many times after the fact) but he isn’t good enough now? Please.
Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux: These are safe picks and no need to expend my venom here.
Craig Biggio: Why he wasn’t in last year baffles me. 3000 hits, played all the tough positions, (Catcher, second base, center field). The argument is “well he played forever” well yeah, and? Al Kaline, (Bless his soul!) played for 22 seasons in Detroit and amassed 3007 hits…first ballot HOFER…Craig Biggio 3060 hits merits nothing? I think Biggio will make it in within ten years but to punish him for perception is idiocy
Halfway home and yes I will have a full ballot of ten
Jack Morris and Alan Trammell: It baffles this writer how Don Drysdale and Barry Larkin are in the Hall of Fame and Jack Morris and Alan Trammell “aren’t good enough”. Enough said on that. There is still hard feelings by this writer (and by him) that Lou Whitaker was discarded as easily as he was.
Mike Piazza: Great hitting catcher, capable on defense, terrible arm. We can excuse that arm though with the offense he brought to the game he belongs in the Hall no doubt in my mind.
Frank Thomas: the Big Hurt, another safe pick.
Curt Schilling: Last year I would have said no. That was short sighted. Money in the playoffs, bulldog tenacity which allowed his butt to cash the checks his mouth wrote and the once magical 3000 K group. Two hundred plus wins. This is a gut feeling much like with Biggio, I think within a decade Schilling will be a HOFER but for whatever reason the joke of baseball writers have decided that he should wait too.
So there you have it. Tom’s Hall of Fame ballot. This is no one’s pick beside my own so take it for what it’s worth.