Well, it is a sport very much about fathers and sons, according to some the great literature (Malmud, etc.)…and Freud said the child is father to the man…The Baseball Hall of Fame should include all who had an impact on the sport of baseball…the good, the bad, and the ugly…just as the Hall of Freud includes the fine and the perverse.

Also it isn’t just to honor players. It also honors owners, GM’s, and managers. And I’m sure that’s a lot of men who weren’t angels either.

How could anyone look at the plaques from baseball’s days of segregation with “no complex feelings”? And what kind of writer idealizes a lack of complex feelings, anyway?

http://garlicfriesandbaseball.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/today-in-history-1984-pete-rose-passes-ty-cobbs-single-hits-record/

James Robbins, National Review Article: http://old.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins121302.asp

So, what will begin to happen in the next 10 years? This transformation will continue, more modern, sabremetric-capable voters will arrive and the old-time, morally bound voters (represented by the middle-aged white Boswell) will exit stage right. I think at that point we’ll really be able to have a legitimate discussion about the steroids age and the players in it. Fewer voters will exists simply to “penalize” the likes of McGuire, Sosa, Bonds and Clemens for “stealing” these cherished records from their boy hood idols. And more voters will try to treat the era and the players in that era on the merits of their performance against others in the era.

Personally, I think the entirety of the morals clause is ridiculous. So what if Pete Rose bet on the game while he was managing; that has ZERO to do with his qualities as a player, and his inclusion into the Hall of Fame should be exactly based on that. Shoeless Joe Jackson? Even if you aren’t an apologist for his role in the Black Sox scandal, he remains one of the best hitters ever to play and his story should be told (good and bad) in the Hall. Same goes for all the sluggers and stars whose names are mired in the mud from the 1995-2005 timeframe. Asterick their plaques, put their steroid allegations and Mitchell reports right next to their plaques, but include them so that 50 years from now people don’t forget the era or its players.

It seems like the HOF and its voters see it as their duty to keep the game pure by not allowing those unsavory characters on its walls. But the face of the matter is, the game’s not pure and it’s reputation has been sullied, broken and rebuilt repeatedly since its inception. The HOF is a historical museum and it should feature anyone who’s had an impact on the sport, whether positive or negative, and yes that includes the Roiders, Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe. The fact that the HOF thinks it’s its duty to “protect” us from the bad things in baseball is, indeed, silly.