HoF

The 283 members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who did not vote for Bert Blyleven aren’t evil, or even necessarily stupid. They simply know nothing of baseball. In a perfect world, those who write about baseball would have a basic familiarity with the game, but this is hardly a perfect world. Blyeleven will probably still get in; his drop in percentage is in large part because of the record high turnout (many of the fogies showed up just to vote against McGwire, I suspect), although his absolute total did drop slightly.

The six members of the BBWAA who voted against Cal Ripken Jr. should be barred from ever commenting about baseball again. The decision to vote against his admittance stems either from a)an appalling misunderstanding of what makes a quality baseball player, or b) a misguided decision to vote against the entire “steroid generation”, manifesting itself in a “no” vote on a candidate never suspected of steroid use and for which not a shred of evidence of steroid use exists. I would doubt that the latter sort of voter exists were it not for the insistence of ESPN that some voters had, indeed, made this argument. Holding to this decision requires an utter ignorance of the history of amphetamine use in baseball (thus disqualifying any player from the 1960 onward), and a refusal to vote for any candidate, ever, in the future, as no player will ever be able to prove that he didn’t use performance enhancing drugs of some sort.

Anyway, congrats to Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn.