Don't see much sports discussion on hubski; hope to change that. Excuse a rant.
::
The Baseball Hall of Fame was once held sacrosanct. For many years there were very, very few idiotic decisions -- the Hall was considered a tremendous honor and revered in a way that other sporting halls of fame aren't. Part of this was due to baseball's status as America's game, but part of it was due to stringent but consistent entrance requirements and a storied history.
This began to change during and after World War II, but that's a lesson for another time. The first real chink in the Hall's armor, was, of course, the Pete Rose saga. That's been done to death; it's divisive and not what I want to talk about either.
Then came steroids, and Mark McGwire, and Rafa Palmeiro, and others. Steroids indirectly ruined the HoF, and here's how: the BBWAA is an ego-ridden, anachronistic joke, and steroids are an excuse for them to exercise their petty power. It is an absolute travesty to leave Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio, two defining players of their generation, waiting on the doorstep for an extra year purely for the sake of doing so -- but that's exactly what happened today. The accusation of steroid use, obviously relevant to Piazza's current situation (and Jeff Bagwell's), is an easy way to "protect" the "integrity" of the Hall. Where does it end? 2013's ballot is stacked. Do eight people get in next year? Because eight people deserve to. Does who deserves to get into the Hall even matter anymore? 2012 was not about the players. It was about the writers. It was about their feeble ego trip against sullying the mythical "first ballot club" with supposed steroid users, and players who are good enough to be a second-ballot Hall of Famer, but not a first balloter -- whatever the hell that means. If you deserve it, you deserve it.
I no longer care about Cooperstown. It's a joke now. Every time I think about it, I can just imagine Craig Biggio, one of the most talented and certainly the hardest-playing infielder I've ever seen, getting a baffling phone call from the committee, saying, "Sorry, 32 percent of the voters thought you don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, after you kicked ass loyally for a bad team for 20 years." Because that's what they're saying. They think they're saying, "He'll get in next year; it doesn't matter, let him wait." They are wrong. What it means is that for the next 365 days he isn't a Hall of Fame-level player, and that's bullshit. There's no crying in baseball and there shouldn't be any fucking politics either.
thenewgreen, b_b, I just thought I would leave the front page of the NY Times' sports page here:
Baseball has clearly never been pure: segregation, spitball era, amphetamine use, etc.. I honestly don't understand why they have to be so selective now. I suppose I understand some of the arguments against players like Sosa who may have been propped up solely by steroids, and apparently many agree since his percentage was much lower than say Clemens. However, I really feel that it is a travesty for Bonds to not be elected on his first ballot. Years before he was ever even linked to steroid use, he had already won 2 MVP awards and was a prolific base stealer. It honestly saddens me that he even took steroids, because I feel he would still have been considered one of the greatest of all time.
Great post, the sports on Hubski comes in waves it seems. I do like to read a good sports article, and I have found that [Grantland]( http://www.grantland.com/) does a really nice job. scrimetime occasionally posts stuff from there which is how I found out about it. We had a NCAA basketball tourney bracket here that Scrimetime won and insomniasexx won our NHL Stanley Cup bracket. Hope to have more this year. Edit: Also, I agree with all your points regarding Cooperstown. I mean if Piazza can inspire a Belle and Sebastian song surely he is a first round pick. Also b_b is spot on regarding Trammel.
I love this post. Grantland is always good for an entertaining hour -- I note that the second article right now is titled "The Fallacy of the Baseball Hall of Fame" -- and I would have a great time doing a March Madness bracket or predicting baseball playoff results. To top it off, I'm a Belle & Sebastian fan. However I'll go to war over Ozzie Smith.
You should write Cooperstown and tell them about that locker room story, it could be the edge Tram needs to get inducted.
Well, the BBWAA lost all of its credibility when Ozzie Smith was a first balloter and Alan Trammell has never even gotten close. Tigers drafted both guys in the same draft ('77, I think??? edit: '76--just looked it up), and there's a reason they let Smith walk, while keeping Tram. I love baseball, but I think Hall voting is a sick joke. Barry Bonds is a first ballot HoFer if there ever was one, steroids or not. Let's not forget he invented the 40/40 before the steroids era. Steroids are such a red herring. My buddy from high school pitched in independent league ball, and he was on 'roids. The problem wasn't ever restricted to the Big League. The writers act as if steroids were some magic bullet that turned ordinary folks into superheroes. Its silly, and so are they.
Well, I can only questionably reply to this post because I'm a diehard Cardinals fan, but ... I'd take Smith over Trammell pretty easily, and yeah, as with every claim I make regarding baseball, I'm prepared to back it up if I have to. But I assume you're a Detroit lifer and I don't even think we should bother. HOWEVER, it is ridiculous to claim that their talent/production gap was such that Smith is a first balloter and Trammell is nothing. Just stupid.
"Talent gap" is the only possible thing that separates them, and its a qualitative argument. There is no measurable (range is a hard thing to measure, but of course we can agree that Smith's range is far superior to Trammell's) in which Smith is significantly superior to Trammell, but there are many in which Trammell is superior to Smith (i.e. every major offensive category). This is not to say that Smith wasn't a good player; just that if he didn't do back flips in the infield, there's no way he's considered superior to Trammell. Edit: Yes I am a giant Tigers' and Trammell fan. And no, I don't hate the Cards for beating the Tigers' ass in '06. Pujols is god in my book (sorry if that's a sore spot).
Not a sore spot, I was one of the vocal minority. Pujols is our second-greatest player and he can do whatever he wants. He had the good graces to leave on top and I will never forget his third home run of Game 3. This is the only part of your post that I agree with, fair warning. Here goes nothing... (all numbers and statements about numbers from baseballreference.com) Fielding is a measurable category. Not like hitting or pitching is, but getting there. (If you aren't a fan of sabermetrics you may not like this.) Now, Trammell was a damn good fielder. But Smith is quite possibly the best fielding shortstop of all time, in terms of zone, range, . There's Belanger, and there're shortstops from back when we didn't keep track of enough statistics to tell us anything. It's an argument. But it's one that Trammell isn't in. (And to pile on to that, I suspect that even now we don't quite understand the impact a great-fielding shortstop has on a team. Shortstop is where the most balls get put in play in the infield, and on a team with a certain pitching staff the benefits of having an Ozzie Smith can't quite be quantified. But you can ignore that part, because I don't have numbers to back it up.) But what I take major umbrage with is your insistence that Trammell was better in "every major offensive category." Basically, Tram has Oz on power. Homers, RBI, slugging, OPS. Expected. He was known as a slugging shortstop (unfairly, given his fielding numbers). But Oz hit just as many doubles, had a relatively similar OBP (.337 to .352), stole about 600 bases at an 80 percent clip (and was additionally better on the basepaths in general), and when you adjust his percentage numbers for league and park, they go up, and Tram's go down. And, perhaps most importantly (especially given what sort of team the Cards were when they had Smith), Oz had a roughly 2:1 BB/K ratio, which is very good, and Trammell's was slightly below 1:1. I consider that an extremely major offensive category. So my point is not that Oz was a better hitter than Trammell; clearly not the case. You have only to look at things like OPS+ and power/speed number to get the gist of how much better he was at the plate, if not on the basepaths afterward. My point is that Ozzie is actually a pretty underrated hitter, and the whole story of his offensive impact isn't told through his career 30 home runs or whatever it was. Further, Smith is a measurably better player and was elected to the Hall because of that (not because of his famous showmanship, nickname, successful team, etc). Incidentally, the guy you should be using as your Hall argument is Barry Larkin. Bill James once ranked shortstops, and he ranked Larkin 6th, Ozzie 7th, and Tram 9th, despite Larkin and Trammell having eerily identical careers.
Question for you both raised by a comment from this article that I posted, but should probably have just left here. Does it matter that Ozzie played, at home, on turf while Trammell didn't? Would Ozzie see less grounders with eyes and bizarre hops? If so, does this impact the perceived disparity between fielding ability?
Speed is more difficult than unpredictability? I suppose that could be true given the lateral range a short stop is required to cover.
I could also point out how five balloteers turned in blank slates in a bold protest against the steroid era of baseball. Because Craig Biggio and Tim Raines certainly used steroids to improve their game. Are they going to do the same thing next year for one of the greatest right-handed pitchers of all time, who made a career out of throwing pinpoint junk? Someone voted for goddamn Aaron Sele this year. If baseball doesn't take a serious look at the requirements for entry into the BBWAA, it'll be a while before anyone takes a serious look at the Hall of Fame again.