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Maybe the Curt Schilling discussion will finally do in the baseball Hall of Fame voting process. Of course, people have been predicting for years the end of this odd relationship, forged among two private businesses and the media who ostensibly cover them, and for years those people have been proved 100% wrong. But, you know, maybe.
Maybe the Schilling thing will do it. Or the Bonds thing. Or Clemens. Or Big Papi, when it’s his turn on the ballot next year alongside fellow first-timer A-Rod, whose most flagrant of outrageous acts of cheating are slowly blurring into the background of his second life as an MLB-approved, ESPN-sanctified broadcaster and keeper of the game. (Hey, the guy was just spotted on the stage at a Presidential inauguration. He must be important.)
Maybe. Right?
For 15 years, as I covered the game regularly, I was a HOF voter. I took the role with grave seriousness, which was probably my first mistake, given the Hall’s ridiculous whipsaw-contradictory moves about its own process over the years; and I looked to the voting guidelines for enlightenment, which was unquestionably a foolish thing to do based upon the history. More on that in a moment, but for now let me quote to you Section 5 of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Election Rules, just so you can see where I was coming from.
Section 5: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”
So for those keeping score at home, that’s 3 of the 6 factors mentioned that are clearly and fully devoted to, basically, whether you were a good guy or a bad guy. Integrity, sportsmanship, character — these terms take in a lot of ground, don’t they? And they seem to point to an almost immediate disqualification of a HOF candidate who, say, royally screwed the game by cheating to attain either a vast personal fortune or an epic personal record. Don’t they?
I never voted for Barry Bonds, who is as good a baseball player as I’ve ever seen in person, and I watched him for most of the balance of his career. Reason: Barry Bonds absolutely, positively cheated his ass off specifically in order to take down the game’s most hallowed record, Hank Aaron’s MLB total of 755 home runs. Bonds knew what he was doing, did it via the most sophisticated system of cheating in the sport’s history to that point, did it repeatedly, lied point-blank when asked about it, and never contradicted even one facet of the book that ultimately laid out his cheating in vivid, sickening detail. The closest his lawyers could come was to go after the book’s authors for how they learned what they learned, which was, sadly, all true.
Over the past few days, you may have read and learned more about the trail of broken glass over which Aaron had to crawl to achieve his record. He was a giant, standing above obstructionists, demeaners and virulent, unapologetic racists. Bonds destroyed Aaron’s record with a calculated, cynical campaign of dishonesty. I mean, surely that checks at least three of those six boxes on the voting guidelines, right?
Only, here’s the problem: The Hall doesn’t say. It doesn’t say because, technically, it turns the voting process over to the BBWAA, the writers, and then pretends to wash its hands of that process — even though its fingerprints remain all over the thing.
Not only that, but to anyone who says, “What’s the point of a Hall of Fame if guys like Bonds and Clemens aren’t in it?”, the best answer I can give you is, Great question. I don’t know. And it’s important to note that the character clauses have been part of the voting charge since the 1940s — but for 60 years or so, they were completely ignored by the BBWAA voters. It wasn’t until the so-called Steroid Era of the late 1990s and early 2000s started producing Hall of Fame candidates that the clauses began to be invoked as reason enough to DQ people like Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro et al.
I did not consider that history when I first became qualified to vote, because I wasn’t involved in any of those prior decisions. I had no interest in repeating past eras of sycophantic behavior by writers, and I’ve always been unswayed by the “Hey, cheaters are probably already in there!” line of excuse-making when it came to voting. I simply looked at the instructions and tried to apply them honestly. But is that really what the Hall of Fame wants?
Let’s be clear: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a business. It was established in 1939 as a way to direct tourist traffic to Cooperstown, N.Y., a place that had been battered by the Great Depression and Prohibition both. The business has flourished in no small measure because its decisions are made hand-in-glove with Major League Baseball, which in turn promotes the hell out of the museum and officially blesses its most sacred moment, the annual induction of the new Hall of Fame class.
Why a bunch of baseball writers are a part of this business is a little fuzzy, other than to say that the Hall’s organizers long ago determined the BBWAA was the best group to decide who gets in and who stays out. It still believes so, according to Jane Forbes Clark, a descendant of the founders and the chair of the Hall. Yet the HOF’s leadership routinely ignores the writers’ issues or concerns — and for that matter, it doesn’t really even trust the vote itself, in which it meddles all the time.
When the writers years ago began to notice a backlog of worthy candidates piling up, they asked for permission to vote for more than 10 players per ballot. The Hall said no. The Hall also unilaterally decided to shorten the eligibility period for candidates from 15 years to 10, most likely in an effort to more quickly get rid of PED-era problem cases like Bonds and Clemens. And it now houses no fewer than four sub-level voting bodies that essentially comprise what used to be called the Veterans Committee — four ways for the Hall to, in essence, make sure that if the writers fail to elect someone the Hall deems as worthy (or good business), it has the means to get that person into Cooperstown anyway.
The writers asked for guidance when it came to the PED era; they received none. You get the feeling, as I got repeatedly during my 15 years in the fold, that the Hall of Fame wanted the writers to clean up MLB’s messes and vast screw-ups when it came to handling controversial careers. Think about it this way: The writers rejected McGwire primarily on grounds of cheating, but McGwire was welcomed back by MLB into multiple coaching jobs. We already discussed Alex Rodriguez, Ambassador of the Game. So what are we really talking about here?
Baseball writers take the HOF vote seriously, at least most of them, and I’ll never argue otherwise. My argument is simpler: The Hall is its own business. It exists to bring people through its doors. And even though Bonds’ and Clemens’ massive accomplishments are well noted within the museum itself, if the absence of a plaque is determined by fans/ticket buyers to be a bad thing, then it’s bad for business, and the Hall needs to do something about that beyond simply hoping that the BBWAA participants somehow figure it out.
I can see the Hall of Fame voting process being revised to resemble something like the People’s Choice Awards; it distinguishes an enshrinee as someone the fans really want to see in there. We talk of the high honor of the HOF because it is, and yet there’s no disputing that any number of terrible human beings are enshrined in Cooperstown, including cheats, racists, abusers and addicts. But fans — and I’m generalizing, of course — mostly want to see guys who were great players in the Hall, not guys who were great guys.
If the only bar to clear for the HOF then became almost exclusively a popular or statistical one, you certainly wouldn’t need the writers to fill out their paper ballots (yes, they’re still used), mail or fax them in (yes, that’s still how the votes are delivered), and then get barbecued by enraged special-interest groups once their votes go public. You can make this easier.
The Hall should own its vote, and enshrine its own characters. It has a Board of Directors that includes Cal Ripken Jr. and Brooks Robinson and Roberto Alomar and Ozzie Smith, and a few owners and executives, and Commissioner Rob Manfred, because, you know, MLB pretty much runs the joint. The Hall has those subcommittees, too. It needn’t apologize for not taking the temperature of baseball writers (not broadcasters or other media, by the way, but only BBWAA-member writers) every year. It can handle its own business.
And that’s all it really is, business. It’s a cool place for you to visit, end of story. For 25 bucks, $15 if you’re aged 7-12, you can get all the baseball history and pageantry you want. You’ll probably stop and spend a little in town, too, maybe at one of the Cooperstown memorabilia shops or local eateries. Maybe you stay over for a night or two. That’s all part of the plan.
Curt Schilling’s presence on the ballot this year (not his first, of course) has brought this conversation full circle. Schilling, post-retirement, has revealed himself to be an awful person, filled with hate, endorsing white nationalist views, advocating the lynching of journalists, loudly approving of the insurrection at the Capitol. On the other hand, he was a really good pitcher and a post-season magician.
The question the Hall of Fame needs to ask itself is simple: Is someone like Schilling good for business or bad for business? Is Bonds? Is Clemens? It’s not a question the writers can, or should, answer. It’s for the business to decide — if only it had the guts to step up and assume the responsibility.