We Need a New System

The Baseball Hall of Fame vote was announced today, and only Goose Gossage got in. What is more ridiculous than who didn't get votes (Lee Smith, Jim Rice and Don Mattingly) is who did get votes. Rod Beck Travis Fryman and Robb Nen each got two Hall of Fame votes. Shawon Dunston, Chuck Finley, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch and Todd Stottlemyre each got one Hall of Fame vote. These are HALL OF FAME VOTES people! It's not like we are talking about a hall of pretty good, or a hall of had that one great season. This is supposed to be the biggest and best names that ever played the game. In thirty years will anyone know that Travis Fryman was the name of a pro baseball player, or will they just think he was a guy who worked in a McDonald's?

The people who vote for these things need to make up their minds what is and isn't acceptable when voting. If relief pitchers like Gossage and Bruce Sutter can be in the Hall, how come Lee Smith isn't getting more votes? For that matter, if a position like closer gets acknowledgement for the Hall, even though it didn't really come about until the 70's, then how about the DH? Where is Harold Baines' love?

I don't know what we can do to make the writers start to take this process seriously, but I would say making their votes public would be a step in the right direction. I can tell you that I would never read the column of a guy who wants to try and tell me that David Justice is one of the all time great players. And that's what a Hall of Fame vote is saying, it is a writer saying that he thinks a player was either an all time great or not.

I've said it before, and I hate to keep harping on it, but we can let a year or two go by without putting someone in. Every person who is elected makes it a bit more crowded in there, and at some point we're going to have to begin to differentiate between the great players and the all time great players. Maybe the time has come to institute a "Legends of the Game" tier to the hall, for which a player wouldn't be eligible until 25 years after his induction to the hall. It is only with the clarity of distance that we can see who was really one of the best of their era, and that would allow us to distinguish the Hank Aaron's from the Billy Williams'.