Posted by wylie715 on 1/24/2019 12:28:00 PM (view original):
Posted by 06gsp on 1/23/2019 7:44:00 PM (view original):
Posted by wylie715 on 1/23/2019 7:16:00 PM (view original):
what he said^^^ Any hall of fame that inducts Harold Baines but not Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens is useless. Nothing against Baines. He was a good player, but he was never great.
it's the way Baines got in that makes it such a joke. he was on the ballot for five years and never got more than 6% of the vote, with many of those years before the ballot got overcrowded with all the steroid guys and almost no writers were using all ten of their votes. then he fell below 5% in his fifth year and was gone.
that should have been it, but apparently if the owner of one of the teams you played on does enough politicking on your behalf, you can get in despite miserably failing by the established process. the veterans committee makes no sense when evaluating modern players anyway, in a pre-TV era there was some merit to it, but everyone voting now watched a ton of Harold Baines games and has access to video of him playing. no new information came to light since he failed to even get 5%.
just openly farcical
does it really matter how Baines got in? His plaque at the hall won't mention it, so who cares how he got in? If he had been elected by the writers instead of the veteran's committee, he still would not belong in the Hall
it matters to me because it makes a mockery of the whole process. the writers have voted in guys i didn't think belonged and not voted for guys i did think belonged. reasonable people can and will disagree but there is something to be said for the current process, as there's a good amount of transparency with the majority of voters revealing their ballots. plus the hundreds of people voting mean a few idiots can't break the entire thing.
but when one powerful owner with an agenda can undermine the whole process, it makes me not care about it. the veteran's committee was supposed to be for overlooked players from past eras, Negro League players, that kind of thing.
i dunno, maybe the process was always crooked and i'm only now noticing, but for me, the Baines debacle was the straw that broke the camels back.