Baseball

Baseball HOF voters make it about them

With the coronavirus not going away anytime soon and a limited amount of vaccine being distributed, there’s a good chance fans in most states won’t be allowed to attend sporting events in 2021.

Maybe it’s quite apropos that there won’t be a baseball player being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. For the first time since 1960, there will be no one in the Hall of Fame with the Veterans Committee not having a role this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time since 2013, no baseball player was elected to the Hall of Fame.

A record 14 blank ballots submitted among the 401 ballots sent in for Baseball Hall of Fame voting just to prove a point that writers would not vote for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling since they stand for everything that’s wrong. Bonds and Clemens are known as steroid users, and Schilling is known for his crazy beliefs such as being anti-LGBT and pro-Donald Trump, supporting the insurrection at Capitol Hill and questioning Adam Jones’ claim about Red Sox fans spewing racial slurs at him among other things.

When did the Hall of Fame become the Hall of Morals? When did it become about the writers?

The Hall of Fame should be about players putting on great performances in their career. Fans care about that more than their personal flaws. After all, we are all born as sinners, right? Everyone has had skeletons in their lives at one point in their life, no? The voters that play judge and jury sure did not lead perfect lives in their life to be all high and mighty when it comes to voting based on players’ ethics and character. I mean one of their voters in the Hall of Fame molested children in the 70s in the late Bill Conlin.

Look, I don’t care for Bonds, Clemens and Schilling. All three of them come out as egomaniacs that love themselves. Bonds and Clemens come out as cheaters who shouldn’t have resorted to steroids since they had the talent to do well without it. Schilling said things that have no place in society.

With that said, they shouldn’t be denied this honor after working hard all of their lives to get to this position. Their flaws should not deny them.

Bonds and Clemens will always deal with the stain of being steroids users. In Bonds’ case, no one thinks of him as the true home run leader despite what stats say. It will always belong to the late Hank Aaron. This hurts the once Giants slugger more than him being denied of the Hall of Fame.

For Schilling, everyone will view him as a bigot and a crazy person than what he accomplished on the field. He brought this on himself. There’s no doubt he is upset that people think of him that way because of the media’s portrayal of him.

Those guys suffered enough, and they will deal with it for the rest of their lives. That’s punishment in itself.

Let the baseball fans be the judge and jury. If they don’t want to watch those guys, they don’t have to. From talking to them, they feel those three should be deserving in the Hall. They want to see them get their day in the sun.

The Hall of Fame should be for the fans to enjoy their heroes one very last time. It shouldn’t be about the writers.

It reached the point that maybe it’s time for baseball announcers or current Major League players or Hall of Fame inductees to vote on who should be in the Hall of Fame. It’s obvious some writers don’t take it seriously anymore.

For the writers to use the Hall of Fame voting process to serve their own agenda and platform, that’s wrong. They are out of touch. To be fair, most of the writers do a great job with the voting process. It’s just that some writers ruin it for others, and they get talked about.

There’s no reason to have an empty ballot just to prove a point. It will always bother me Albert Belle’s name is not on a Hall of Fame ballot because he behaved like a jerk towards the writers. It took a long time for Jim Rice to be in the Hall of Fame because reporters did not like his attitude towards them.

I always thought eventually writers would have a change of heart and vote Bonds and Clemens in, but now, I don’t think it will ever happen. Remember steroid users Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz will be on their ballot their first year at the same time Bonds and Clemens complete their final year of eligibility. It would be hard to vote for Bonds and Clemens and not vote for Rodriguez and Ortiz.

If Bud Selig can be in the Hall of Fame, so can Bonds, Schilling and other steroid users. After all, Selig served as a complicit when steroids were being passed around in the late 90s. He couldn’t do anything about it because he knew the sport needed a boost after the ill-fated strike that alienated fans.

The fans couldn’t care less anymore whether players took steroids or not. They moved on.

It’s time for some writers to enter the 21st century and stop having a stone-age mentality.

Either that or maybe it’s time to change the voting process and include other voters that are not sportswriters.

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