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1/26/22

Reese Kaplan -- What Makes a Hall of Fame Player?


The Baseball Hall of Fame voting has taken place for the calendar year 2022 and last night the announcements were made as to who the writers feel is deserving of this lifetime commendation for their achievements on the diamond.  

I'm not going to get into the debate about specific players who deserve or don't deserve to be in the HOF.  That can be detail oriented yet tiring as everyone's opinions differ greatly.  No, the issue on the table today is what constitutes an all-time great whose selection is warranted as a positive part of baseball history.  

Let's get one thing clear right up front.  There are a great many players in Cooperstown who were far from being nominated as choir boys for their lifestyle.  Everyone knows about the hard drinking of Mickey Mantle, the racist rhetoric of Ty Cobb, and the entire population of the major leagues who fought hard against the arrival and career of Jackie Robinson when he broke the color barrier.  These issues are about personality and off-the-field learning that got misapplied on the field.


The bigger issue to consider is one of professional ethics and what it means to the fabric of baseball and the lessons being taught to future generations.  

Players who openly cheated on the field -- be it stealing signs, taking performance enhancing drugs or engaging in behaviors we would not like to see in our children -- they do not deserve to be memorialized as the greatest of all time.  Throw in some off-the-field issues like domestic violence and other aspects of implosion of relationships that hit the headlines and consider if that kind of lifestyle is what you want emulated.

Now the flip side of these issues is the ballplayer who follows all the rules, doesn't knowingly attract headlines for questionable decisions and produces regularly on the field.  Take David Wright as an example of this type of individual.  

He spent his entire career as a true professional, never had visible disagreements with other players, never evoked stories of wanton debauchery, didn't use artificial means to fight his many injuries and finished an aborted career due to health problems with solid All Star numbers.  His not quite lofty totals don't ensure him enshrinement nor does his quality behavior.  


When you have players who denied and then later admitted using PEDs to add to their fastball velocity, home run power or baserunning speed, you have to wonder once again if they should be in the conversation about who gets a trip to Cooperstown and who should be thankful for the big paychecks and notoriety, but not be hailed as an all-time "great" because how they achieved their performance was in violation of the rules.

Take it out of the realm of baseball for a minute and think about other sports such as auto racing.  If you found out that your all-time favorite driver with the record-smashing total of victories was using some kind of rocket fuel in his vehicle's engine rather than what was permitted by the the racing association, would that simply be good sportsmanship or would that cheating be a clear violation of the rules and an indication that he or she was not worthy of the accolades based simply upon the statistical total of wins during his/her driving career?


For this year and going forward let's celebrate the honestly earned votes to the Hall of Fame for the types of people who worked hard and behaved properly to help future generations know what to do and how to conduct themselves in life.  

Let's not heap praise on the individuals who cheated their way into the HOF nor whose off-the-field behaviors were not indicative of what we'd like to see in others.  We should look up to the elite members in Cooperstown and not excuse them with an asterisk by their names.  

8 comments:

  1. PADS are not a factor here. Otherwise Big Papi wouldn't have been dancing in his living room last night.

    This is a popularity contest run by little men that mostly never played an inning of organized ball.

    They are called writers.

    Why this isn't run by a committee of half team reps and half old HOF members that played against/with those that are nominated is..

    I'm making too much sense now.

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  2. Mack, so true. The media is the hypocrites - fake news abounds - yet, they hold the levers to make stupid votes.

    As a voter, your liking or disliking the Bloody Sock Guy from Boston should not enter into consideration.

    Could he PLAY? The answer is definitely, yes.

    Frankly, if he is not let in, then Ty Cobb should be taken out.

    Take the responsibility away from the writers. Too many morons

    Even in a career cut short, if Mr. Nicest Guy Around, David Wright, had pushed the Wilpons to move the Shea fences in a but, and but more realistically pushed them - very hard - to not build the ridiculously deep early year dimensions of Citifield, he'd have a career higher average, more HRs, more RBIs, and a better HOF case. I've thought a few times, what would an in-their-prime Reggie Jackson or A Rod have done if he heard about the field dimensions the Wilpons were proposing? Reggie would have screamed and threatened - "you want to do WHAT? I'm leaving." He would have made sure his fans knew he thought the plans were insane.

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  3. The above said, Schilling was unfairly kept out of the HOF by writers who (right or wrong) despised him.

    Wright may on the other hand squeak in due to there being writers who greatly appreciated him as a great guy.

    But, if Wright gets in, Keith Hernandez should absolutely get in.

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  4. Agree with Mack 100%. Its a popularity contest.
    Players should be elected based on what they did on the field. Being a good citizen off field would be nice but shouldn't be a requirement unless the conduct was way off line.

    Did Bonds cheat when PED were visible in most locker rooms?. You still have to hit the ball out of the park and that requires great skill. PED is not going to help square the ball in the right part of the bat. Is not going to give better eyesight.

    There is no way that Ortiz should be in the HOF and not Bonds, Clements and Schilling.

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  5. Count me in the minority, then. If someone cheats they don't belong in the Hall of Fame. If someone engages in criminal activity, they don't belong in the Hall of Fame either.

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  6. I think if a player is caught cheating, I'd put his stats on a reduced scale to penalize for the cheating factor.

    So Barry and Roger and A Rod, and others? How about you whack their stats 25% - if they still qualify, I'd vote them in.

    That sort of haircut, on the other hand, would obviously keep the likes of Robbie Cano far from the Hall of Fame.

    Speaking of the Hall of Fame, I decided to look at Dr J's early team stats. In 1971-72, he scored 28 PPG and had 15.4 rebounds as a 22(?) year old. I completely about his teammate Charlie Scott who averaged nearly 35 PPG that year and made it to the NBA HOF himself.

    The following season, Julius was joined for a while by a very young George Gervin. There was a lot of surreal talent in that league.

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  7. I have bats in my sports collection of all the 500 HR hitters (all autographed except Ruth, Foxx, and Ott, but those 3 ARE their model bats). They are in order by HR total. But I keep the PED users bats in a separate row on the wall, at the end, segregated from the others.

    I feel like the PED stars like Bonds, Sosa, McGuire, Clemems, etc. should likewise be in a separate wing of the HOF. Don't ask me what that wing would be called. Those players were putting up HOF type numbers long before they started using PEDs. You can't taint ALL of their stats. I too question how much help PEDs were in terms of things like pitch recognition, making contact, perfect swing, etc. Adding a few feet to your long ball seems like the ONLY benefit.

    I don't know the answer but I agree, that there are plenty of character skunks already in the HOF and that sportswriters should not be making the decisions. Then there's Pete Rose. Gambling seems like a minor offense in this day and age.

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