You really can’t expect much from a world where Dances with Wolves beats GoodFellas for Best Picture and Madonna and LL Cool J frolic in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while more influential bands like Cheap Trick linger outside with noses pressed to the glass. Whenever you put such decisions in the hands of a preordained group of people — be they film critics, music scribes or baseball journalists — you are going to see some stupid shit. Because, as my great Uncle Demetrius told me time and time again, people are just f#$king idiots.
So it wasn’t surprising to me to see that zero players from the Baseball Hall of Fame voting class of 2013 were elected in. This was the baseball writers’ big chance to send that all important “message” that certain players on this year’s ballot “sullied” the game with their “use of banned substances” to gain “competitive edge.”
So they did it, and that’s fine for them, I guess. Gives them that rare chance to flex a bit of muscle. But to me, their actions, while widely applauded by a lot of fans, were nothing more than a reminder that the Baseball Hall of Fame is, at its core, a popularity contest. It’s not “the best,” it’s “the people who this group of voters considered the best.” And those voters have their own tastes, beliefs and prejudices. In that regard, it’s no more a reflection of the greatest baseball players of our time than, to use the earlier example, Dances with Wolves is a better film than GoodFellas.
That said, I did at least get a couple laughs from the votes that were spread around:
Aaron Sele got approximately one HOF vote which begs the question, how did Aaron Sele’s mom get her hands on a Hall of Fame voting ballot?
Kenny Lofton only got 3.2% of the HOF vote. But in the critical “guys whose names kinda sound like Kenny Loggins” category, he got 96%.
Royce Clayton was on the ballot. Yes, that Royce Clayton. He got no votes, but he was there.
Schilling got more votes than Clemens. Which made me happy.
