The 2007 Hall of Fame voting results were just released, and as expected, Ripken and Gwynn are the only electees (with 90+% of the ballots.)
Goose Gossage was just short with 71%, and Mark McGwire got 23% in his first ballot.
Did the sportswriters make the right call? Should Gossage have gone in this year? Should McGwire have gotten more than 23%?
Simmons doesn’t really hammer the point he should: all these sportswriters chirping about “protecting the integrity of the Hall” filled up plenty of column-inches and sold plenty of papers writing about that summer of 1998.
Jayson Stark, Buster Olney, Jim Caple and Peter Gammons all voted for him.
I don’t buy the comparisons to Gaylord Perry, though, because doctoring the ball isn’t quite on the same level as injecting horse drugs into your ass (again, not that we have concrete proof McGwire or Sosa did.)
Ripkin and Gwynn: No brainer. Incredible stats and nearly impeccable character. I have heard that Cal could be a little bit of a dick but Tony was loved by everyone and this is coming from a third generation Dodger fan.
Goose: I could go either way.
McGwire: He was a bad boy. He had a chance to man up during the Congressional Hearings and he blew it. He should get in eventually but his punishment should be that he has to wait. Five years should do it.
It looks like the voters are coming around re: Gossage, he should make it in next year. If any relievers are going to be in the Hall, Goose should be. He almost invented the closer role. He certainly defined it.
McGwire owes his career to steroids. He was always a power hitter, but his average was barely over the Mendoza line in the early 90’s. He’d have been out of the game if he hadn’t started juicing.
Aw man, so little love for Alan Trammell…
I think he’s got a really strong case. And Blyleven, of course.
Had I been a voter, my ballot would have read Ripken, Gwynn, Gossage, Trammell, and Blyleven. I wouldn’t have a heart attack if Dawson was elected, either.
I’ll say this… I am tremendously confused by the eight people who opted to leave Ripken off their ballots. Really? He’s not an HOF-er? And you write? About sports? For a living?
I’d have voted for McGwire, Gossage, Trammell, and Dale Murphy, along with Ripken and Gwynn.
…and Blyleven. Can’t forget Blyleven.
There are some people who have this… thing… about not selecting people on their first eligible ballot. I haven’t the slightest idea why they do it, but they seem to claim it’s a matter of respect… or something.
I’ve been in the No-HOF camp for McGwire and the rest of the supposed roid-monsters, but I think Simmons makes a good argument. What is the HOF supposed to be? If it’s really just about reflecting the famous players and events of baseballs history, then these guys should probably be in. Any time we try and legislate morality it usually ends up blowing up in our faces, sports is probably no different.
That’s what this is all about, if you think the Hall is some idealized after school special where only the classiest and greatest players should be honored, then you probably don’t want any of those guys in the game. And you must cope with the fact that Cobb and a bunch of other bastards are in.
Big Mac is in the Hall, just not with a plaque, his 70 HRs and the ‘98 season are chronicled as are several of his career records. At the very least his bat, shoes and ball from breaking Maris’ record are probably there.
Is that good enough for the “reflecting the games history” angle? I’m not sure, should we let all these guys be there as part of a living almanac but reserve the plaques for the feel-good type guys? Maybe. I know I’m not as certain about my opinion on keeping them out any more.
I’m sure the gritty old baseball guys who form the majority of the HoF voting pool will rationalize Cobb and the other bastards. More damaging to their self righteousness is the fact that guys like Whitey Ford, who was a known and regular cheater (scuffer/spitballer/mudballer), are in.
Need him in, my son will go nuts for his autographed ball. My wife won it last year at some charity event.
Dale Murphy gets overlooked again 
Not overlooked, he just doesn’t measure up. He had about five great seasons then just fell off the table.
He’s Don Mattingly without the injuries. Coincidentally, they both got about the same number of votes for the Hall. Mattingly 54, Murphy 50.
I was reading about the reasons they didn’t vote - one said he didn’t want to vote for anyone from this era because it couldn’t be proven they didn’t use steroids, and a few others just didn’t want anyone to get in unanimously or even for Ripken and Gwynn to get the highest percentage. (Like Seaver was the best player ever.) It was so stupid that I plan to pay a lot less attention to this stuff in future years. I knew the MLB was run by dopes, but now I wonder if the Hall is worse.
You’re probably right, but I think it’s wrong to try and compare pitchers doctoring a ball and players corking bats to using steroids. Pretty much every sport in the world has a long history or players trying gain an upper hand outside the rules. You can dislike and disrespect those guys. The hockey goalies with the oversized pads, the players with illegally curved sticks. NFL players wearing stick 'um and kickers using doctored balls before the K-balls. We don’t even need to get into coaches stealing signs, withholding game tapes, tweaking injury reports, doctoring home fields, and all manner of sneaky practices.
Gamesmanship might be shady and distasteful to some, but it’s not the same as steroids and other drug use. For that matter, comparing either to racism, deliberately injuring players and gambling is probably wrong too.
Steroids and greenies need to be considered on their own, and it’s probably a much greyer discussion than people realize or want to think. How much worse is HGH and other drugs than Andro? How about Creatine? Which other supplements give modern players an edge over guys in the 20s? What about cocaine and amphetamines? Ephedra? Caffeine?
You can always just fall back on whats legal versus illegal, but I’m not even sure HGH is a controlled substance. At the very least none of these guys broke any of baseballs rules and none tested positive.
The whole thing is a mess. And I think steroids are being over-reacted to a little, certainly Big Mac and Bonds aren’t the only ones who were involved.
If anyone’s interested, here is the HOF prediction thread that we did back in November/December.
Most people in that thread seem to have predicted the outcome—only Ripken and Gwynn in on this ballot.
Peter Gammons and Tim Kurkjian made a good point this afternoon: consider what the player did on the field and nothing else. They both made the comparison to Pete Rose: we have no evidence Rose bet on baseball as a player, and we have no evidence McGwire actually used steroids, so voting against them is penalizing them for events that happened off the field.
No, Gammons and Kurkjian are wrong about that. Extreme off the field stuff has to count too. If Rose had killed his ex-wife and her boyfriend (like a certain football HOFer), and then came up for a vote for the HOF, wouldn’t the HOF be justified in voting him down? Of course it would. Gammons and Kurkjian are saying foolishly that murderers, gamblers and dopers (not us Dopers 
) are fine for the HOF so long as they could really play ball.
I’m not for keeping Rose out for cheating on his taxes, I’m for keeping him out because of the gambling while he was Reds’ manager.
Why is that so foolish? There isn’t an agreed upon definition of what makes a HOFer so why is it silly for one man to decide that his definition is solely restricted to what happened between the lines?
If a murderer is the GOAT, then he’s the GOAT. You might not want to idolize him, or even applaud him, but if he put up every great record and won titles he’s the best player regardless.
Do you immediately decide that every musician who ends up with a raging drug habit or kills someone drunk driving or abuses women ceases to have made great music?
Was Thomas Jefferson not a great politician, diplomat and founding father because he was a slave owner and diddler?
How about Walt Whitman? Could he write a little, or is that negated by his affinity for young boys?
Until everyone agrees what the respective Halls of Fame are meant to be, you can’t blast one persons definition of it. It’s as valid as the next.
I think that’s the point that Simmons is making, which I’m starting to agree with, in that athletes (and musicians, writers, politicians) are just people. People in this world have tons of issues and tons of baggage. Some people have a bad habit of idealizing athletes and expecting a little more from them than you would your next door neighbor, which is probably a little unfair.