And you know this how? Because Pete “Veritas” Rose has always said so?

No, it wouldn’t be nicer nor is the period silly.

Frankly, it almost necessary in much the same way the 5 year waiting period was intended to take some of the emotion and sentimentality out of the voting process. The time and distance required that is refereed to as silly really allows the process of digesting the facts and getting past the reactionary. At some point baseball fans, regardless of the current feelings, will develop a better understanding of the affect of PEDs on baseball if for no other reason more will be learned about the overall pervasiveness of PEDs.

Right now, I think most fans have a visceral response to PEDs in baseball. Given time I think much of the emotion will be removed and logic will drive the process. But, for that to take hold it will take time, .. silly or otherwise.

The practical effect of the clause is that it works both ways. But that doesn’t mean that it was intended to do that. Let alone that it should.

And I don’t think the morality clause has, to date, kept anyone out except McGwire, who no matter what some voters have said after the fact to cover for their moralizing, most certainly would have been a shoe-in inductee by now. Maybe not on the merits — he’s more marginal than a lot of people think — but on the “fame” side of things he’d be in.

The morals clause is working against Jeff Bagwell. It will clearly bar Bonds and Clemens.

You say “How much nicer if we could just cut out the silly interim period, cast out the morality of it all and do right by history?”

That leads to a couple questions. First, by silly interim period are you referring to the 5 year waiting period? If so, I have to disagree for a couple reasons, primarily is my belief that the 5 year period gives time to reflect on the merits of a players career. Sure, with some all time greats it seems odd to make them wait. However, rather than think of it as a negative I see it as a chance to shine a light on a guy a few years after his career is over. Even guys with little chance of election get remembered when the new ballot comes out and you see Player X’s name look him up in BB-Ref and recall some anecdotes from his career.

As far as the “character clause” goes, I don’t think it has been a problem. Are there a bunch of players who should have been elected but were not despite stellar careers mainly because of character blemishes? I can’t think of any. I suppose it could be argued that some took longer to get elected due to character issues (cocaine, whatever). However, in most of those cases we are talking about players who were not shoe in automatic HoF’rs anyway. Maybe Albert Belle would have lasted on the ballot a few more years if he wasn’t perceived to be a sociopath. His career was short enough that voters may have just thought he didn’t merit election. If anything, I think the character issue has helped nice guy borderline cases get elected (or get elected more quickly). Puckett was loved and many thought his career was derailed by a pitch to the head (though I doubt glaucoma works like that).

The process may be slower than we’d like, but I believe 50 years from now the right players from this era will be in the HoF. Personally, I see the Rose thing as clearly being a different issue from steroids, but I believe his being excluded is helping some writers justify to themselves not voting for some of these guys.