Comments on: Why do writers vote on the Hall of Fame again?

By: moogro

moogro — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:48:46 +0000

This.

By: omniusprime

omniusprime — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:13:03 +0000

Sports pundits don’t make any better decisions than sports fans do when it comes to voting for All Stars in any sport. Let’s face it, sports pundits are worthless fools who could never do a real job.

Only corrupt scum like Baggarly would vote for Barry Bonds or any other performance enhancing drug abuser. Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, Clemens and the other PED abusers don’t belong in the Hall of Fame, once they’re in it will be the Hall of Shame and they will taint every other member who’s in and didn’t cheat.

Do not reward cheaters by voting them into the Hall of Fame, only a corrupt jerk would do that. I just wish MLB had the integrity to ensure none of them ever made it on the ballot. I just hope that gambling addict and liar Pete Rose never makes it in, he just doesn’t deserve the honor.

Just Say No to Cheaters!!!

By: packerbadger

packerbadger — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:10:55 +0000

I quit watching/following MLB in 1995 when they whined about making an AVERAGE of $1.4 million/yr. Now, you guys are putting cheaters in the HOF. Nice. Explain that to a 10 or 11 yr old and how its OK to cheat. You guys putting these self centered primadonnas in the HOF suck.

By: hsven1887

hsven1887 — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:31:59 +0000

HOF is losing money, so they could do with some more source of revenue, right?

Make a vote-in TV show: America’s Got Talent meets Survivor meets HOF. Lots of publicity, lots of revenue, lots of interest in Baseball created. Everybody wins.

By: churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged

churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:35:33 +0000

Here’s a run around fan vote vs BBWAA courtesy of the great Tom Tango. Method explained in the article:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/bbwaa_v_book_blog_readers/

By: sabatimus

sabatimus — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:27:58 +0000

So you want a BCS HOF?

By: historiophiliac

historiophiliac — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:54:21 +0000

Well, we might actually mean it then…

By: paperlions

paperlions — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:31:58 +0000

So….nothing would change, then?

By: thereisaparty

thereisaparty — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:30:14 +0000

Writers dictating membership is one way to ensure we discuss the HOF every year. The gatekeepers have multiple forums with large readerships that hear about each election. If the votes are taken away from the writers, will people still care (as fervently) about the HOF?

By: historiophiliac

historiophiliac — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:44:30 +0000

Ok, but we get to heckle you and talk trash about you then.

By: alang3131982

alang3131982 — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:24:27 +0000

But it’s not like writers (hello poor MVP, HoF decisions), managers (Gold Gloves, anyone) and players do any better. All we know is that allowing a lot of people who arent exactly experts vote on somethign ends up with a bad result…

I agree that some subset of writers should probably be the voting body, but right now it’s incredibly vast and ridiculous…

By: paperlions

paperlions — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:54:43 +0000

Just let me make the decision of who should be in the HOF and who shouldn’t.

By: historiophiliac

historiophiliac — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:24:50 +0000

The problem with that is: the staff at the HOF is not large, so essentially, it would become more like a committee vote. There aren’t that many historians who do baseball history — or sports history — so, again, you’re talking a small number even outside that museum. Among all these people, there tends not to be a great deal of diversity, and, invariably, membership/voting would become political. And, it often happens that people who work that closely on a subject tend to get caught up in the details, so votes could get mired in minutiae. And, if you think historians are really better at being objective, I refer you to all the BS around the Jefferson-Hemings controversy. Historians can be tools and fanboys too.

By: abaird2012

abaird2012 — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:07:35 +0000

1300 lbs. And Jack Morris.

By: abaird2012

abaird2012 — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:04:50 +0000

Craig, are we to assume that your brother doesn’t read your stuff? Also, n.b. — Nolan Ryan’s IN the HOF, IIRC so … that means that your brother is at least as well-inforned as the average BBWAA member. QED. Let’s give him a vote!

By: stex52

stex52 — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:01:45 +0000

I might be willing to get the fans to vote on the weight of each player chosen.

But I’d prefer not to have them vote on their merits.

By: The Dangerous Mabry

The Dangerous Mabry — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:44:36 +0000

A group like SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) would make a lot more sense as a voting body. Unfortunately, the popularity of “sabermetrics” has caused most people to think that SABR is just a statistics-minded organization, when the whole purpose of the group was to act as baseball historians and researchers. These are people who are dedicated to the history and understanding of the game, and are exactly the sort of people you’d want to be deciding on each player’s place in history.

As I said, though, I think the backlash against making that sort of change to the voting process would be enormous because it’s thought of as a group of statheads, regardless of the fact that statistical research is an interest of only a small part of the group’s membership.

By: shaggylocks

shaggylocks — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:06:34 +0000

I'd actually be intrigued to see the results of a fan HOF vote. Individual fans may not make good selections, but they might, as a whole, get the end result right. The New Yorker's James Surowiecki wrote a book called The Wisdom of Crowds, which opened with a recounting of an oft-repeated experiment in which a large group of people is asked to guess the weight of a bull. Although there might, by chance, be a few people in the crowd who are skilled at guessing the weight of livestock, the majority are just average Joes who guess randomly. Yet the average of the numbers guessed is almost always eerily accurate, almost to the pound. You could point to the All Star Game as evidence that fan votes don't always produce the best results, but the ASG voting system is designed in a way that rewards rabid fan bases, so I don't think it's necessarily the best example to use.

By: raysfan1

raysfan1 — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:01:59 +0000

I can see a pool of voters having the franchise. However, the last thing Cooperstown wants is an induction ceremony with no living legends to induct, ie nobody anyone wants to pay to go see. That weekend is huge money for Cooperstown. I can see where they might do something like mandate some arbitrary number of inductees similar to the football HoF.

By: albertmn

albertmn — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:58:57 +0000

Sorry, but fans should have no part of this vote, not even a portion. If you think baseball writers (or former baseball writers) are uninformed, fans would be far worse. You would also open it up to things like you have had in the NBA All Star when the billions of Chinese fans voted Yao Ming to start every All Star game and have Jeremy Lin nearly there this year. This would be too open to possible fraud or vote tampering, as it would be likely done online. It would also mean teams with more fans would have more All Star, whether deserving or not.

I have to agree with biff above. Couldn’t/Shouldn’t the HOF just set a panel of people to decide this?

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:47:50 +0000

It would be a lot more of a logistical hassle, probably more than it’s worth, but why not just make it a vote where the fans, journalists and current players each got an equal say in the matter?

By: bankboy2012

bankboy2012 — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:45:50 +0000

A start would be to take away the lifetime vote. Once you retire or move off a regular baseball beat you can keep your vote for 5 years max. That period still covers players you saw regularly so you’re at least informed on who you’re voting for. After that, sorry, no more ballots for you.

By: biffmcgregor

biffmcgregor — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:27:43 +0000

The HOF is a private museum, right? Why wouldn’t they just, I don’t know, have a curator? Or multiple curators? Maybe I don’t know how museums work, but I’m pretty sure the National Gallery or MOMA wouldn’t poll art critics to pick what goes in their permanent collection.

By: stex52

stex52 — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:59:44 +0000

Here’s the reason for letting the fans vote. They are the customers. They should get a choice in such things.

Here’s why not. Three words. “All Star Game.”

By: phisticuffs

phisticuffs — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:44:42 +0000

Let the public vote? [insert your own joke here about how well our political process works with public participation]. Just look at how “well” fans do when they vote for all stars (in all sports). It’s awfully early in the year to hand out the award, but I think this has serious potential to be the worst idea of 2013.

By: Chris Fiorentino

Chris Fiorentino — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:38:45 +0000

The only way to avoid all the arguments is to simply make Hall of Fame entry an objective process. Get a bunch of people in a room and figure out a criteria using as many #’s as you want and then plug them into a computer and when it comes out 1 or greater, the player is in. When it comes out less than 1, the player is not in.

That will never happen, so I guess everybody just has to get used to the arguments. Because there really is no right or wrong side when the entire voting process is subjective.