The Baseball HOF is taken very seriously.  MLB has been around since 1876.  It is older than all the other major professional sports by a lot.  Next year is the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field opening and it didn’t host it’s first MLB game until MLB was 40 years old! (Yes I know that math doesn’t add up correctly but that is because the first 2 years, Wrigley Field was home of a Federal League baseball team…not an MLB team.)  Unlike football and basketball, baseball’s mystic is in the stats.  Most football fans can’t tell you that Emmitt Smith rushed for EXACTLY 18,355 yards or that Brett Favre threw EXACTLY 508 TD passes or for EXACTLY 71,838 yards or that Jerry Rice had EXACTLY 197 receiving TDs or EXACTLY 22,895 yards receiving.  Most fans know those players hold those records but not what those numbers are.  Hell I had to look them up too!  The same goes for the NBA.  Most fans can’t tell you that Kareem Abdul Jabbar had 38,387 points in his career and I question how many even know that it isn’t Michael Jordan (32,292 pts…but MJ does have greatest PPG average) that holds the record.  However, baseball is all about the stats and the milestone numbers.  500 Home Run Club.  3,000 hits.  300 wins.  People know that Babe Ruth had 714 HRs and that Hank Aaron had 755.  People know that Pete Rose broke the hit record with his 4,19oth hit.  They can tell you Willie Mays had 660 home runs or that Roberto Clemente ended up with exactly 3,000 hits.  They know Cy Young had 511 wins.  The Baseball HOF in Cooperstown in a fabled place.  The difficulty to get into the HOF, the scrutiny given to the players, the aura of it being more special to be a “first ballot” Hall of Famer all make it a hallowed place.  People take this seriously.  Unlike the Pro Football HOF in Canton, Ohio or the Basketball HOF (I’m not even sure where that is located), Cooperstown is much more elitist in choosing their membership.

NO ONE has ever been elected to the Baseball HOF unanimously.  There were baseball writers that didn’t vote for Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron and Ted Williams.  Every year there has to be at least one dbag that uses his vote to make himself the story.  This year it is a douchebag that turned in a ballot with only Jack Morris because he “won’t vote for ANY player that played during the steroid era.”  Therefore, Greg Maddux was left off his ballot.  The same Greg Maddux that finished with 355 wins (8th all time…the most for anyone that has pitched in the last 50 years).  The same Greg Maddux that won 4 Cy Young Awards in a row.  The same Greg Maddux that finished 2 straight seasons with an ERA under 2!  The same Greg Maddux that is 25th all time in WAR (7th among pitchers).  The same Greg Maddux that pitched in the steroid era and dominated even though there is not one person in the world that thinks he was one of the players on steroids.

There were not any sane individuals that thought Greg Maddux would be the first player to receive a vote from every baseball writer.  There are dbag writers that send in blank ballots just to make sure that someone isn’t unanimous.  They claim it is a “protest that none of the other greats were unanimous.”  Bullshit.  It is a publicity stunt.  How many BBWAA members do you know?  How many baseball writers can you think of off the top of your head right now?  Exactly.  People that don’t have the fame or recognition of the people that they are voting on decide who makes it into the Hall of Fame.  What better way to actually get their name known, even if it is only for a few weeks, than to do something asinine with your HOF ballot.  So of course some greedy, publicity seeking schmuck from LA would turn in a HOF ballot this year with only Jack Morris listed.  The talk all winter was about how loaded this ballot was.  You can vote for up to 10 players each year.  Many writers were talking about how there were more than 10 worthy candidates this year.  What the writers were really worried about was nice players that were never going to get into the HOF anyway not receiving the required 5% of the vote to remain on the ballot.  The Baseball HOF is such a big deal that even being on the ballot is a source of pride for the players that don’t get elected.  Greg Maddux was joined by Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas as first timers on the ballot.  All three should be shoo-ins for the Hall.  The ballot is littered with players that have worthy stats but are highly suspected of PED use: Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Palmerio, Piazza, Bagwell.  There is Jack Morris in his final year of eligibility.  There is Craig Biggio who was a victim of the old “he’s a Hall of Famer but he’s not a FIRST BALLOT Hall of Famer” crap.  There are Lee Smith, Alan Trammel and Don Mattingly that have been on ballot for over a decade and are running out of time and players like Tim Raines and Edgar Martinez that have strong followings and have been on for half a decade.  That is 17 players with some sort of argument to at least be considered for the HOF so even if every writer used all 10 spots (and we know 1 publicity hound that I give the satisfaction of naming only used 1), there will be some players that don’t get in and more than likely some may not reach the 5% plateau to remain on the ballot.  The ones not receiving 5% would never get in anyway.  In order to reach the required 75%, I would think that you would have to be at least over 40% in each election to think you have any chance of making up the required votes for election and probably more realistically, at least 55%.

I think the Hall of Fame is important enough that the RIGHT to vote for players should be taken seriously.  In a class of 17 worthy candidates if you don’t care about steroids and at least 6 or 7 players worthy of consideration if you do care about PEDs in baseball, turning in a ballot with just Jack Morris is ridiculous.  Yet some baseball writers are taking to twitter to defend the jackbag saying that he earned his vote and has a right to his opinion.  Very true.  He earned the right to vote.  He has the right to his opinion.  He showed that he was an idiot.  It makes EVERYONE in the BBWAA look like crap when stuff like this happens.  It stains the whole community.  The others should care when a dufus pulls a stunt like this.  They should DEMAND that his voting PRIVILEGE be taken away from him.  Blank ballots in a year that has players like Greg Maddux available in order to make sure no one is unanimous should be punished.  A ballot with only Jack Morris on it when there are at least 5 or 6 players more worthy (if not 10 – 15) should be punished.  People should stop mentioning the publicity hounds names.  They should stop writing articles in newspapers giving them the very publicity that they seek.  ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, CBS Sports etc should keep them off their television shows.  Don’t give them the publicity that they seek.  There is no such thing as bad publicity when all you want is for people to know your name so don’t give them the satisfaction.  Take away their votes and take away their BBWAA card and a decade from now we won’t have a Boston writer leaving Derek Jeter off their ballot because they don’t vote for Yankees players.