The Buhner.com Blog

…and as I thought might happen, Gwynn and Ripken got in, and no one else did. I have no issue with that; surely Gwynn and Ripken deserve to be in the Hall, and it’s not like there were any “can’t miss” candidates that got locked out, or any players who got in that shouldn’t have this year. If you’re a fan of Steve Garvey, it kind of sucks, but outside of Garvey, there were no players who had a strong case for Hall inclusion that won’t be on the ballot next year.

Well, maybe one - but Albert is another issue.

Gossage needed 21 more votes to be included, and barring a sudden an unusual change of heart or the Goose getting involved in a double homicide, he’ll get in - probably next year. Gossage was only one of two holdovers from last year’s ballot to see an increase in the number of votes they received (Dave Concepcion was the other, which continues to boggle the mind), which is to be expected. While the writers hold onto their votes like the last slice of pizza, they still want to see someone get elected each year (1996 was the last election that saw no player elected) so in a case like last year, a voter might be more willing to vote for a borderline candidate than he would in a year where there are obvious selections that would make the Hall. Mediocre years (where maybe there’s one candidate) allow also-rans to gain momentum and get talked about. Bad years (where there’s no good candidate) are the opening that the sometimes undeserving either get in or get close enough to get the sympathy votes the following year or years to push them over the top. Solid years (like this one) just hurt the chances for those struggling to get the momentum they need.

Albert Belle is now off the ballot, losing more than half the votes he received last year (40 to 19) to fall under 5%. Again, I feel that while Belle isn’t an obvious Hall candidate, he deserves at least a little more consideration than two years on the ballot. Of course, Belle’s recent issues likely helped his drop more than anything else - it’s not as if Belle suddenly hit less home runs or the 1994 season didn’t happen. A decent amount of voters have the “first year ballot” issue, and I’m sure that there were voters who might have voted for Belle this season who didn’t vote for him last season just for that issue, but Belle’s rejection was a character issue first and foremost. It’s one thing to withhold your vote for a player because you think he might have cheated; it’s another to hold back your vote because you think he’s an asshole. It’s like stiffing your Hooters waitress her tip because she wasn’t hot enough.

McGwire got 23.5% of the vote, which was less than I thought he was going to get, especially with the double-reverse that some sportswriters did regarding McGwire’s candidacy. In 2002, Mark McGwire was going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer. In 2005, it was open for discussion whether questions about McGwire were going to hurt his first ballot election chances. In 2006, McGwire was suddenly an unlikely candidate for election, and in 2007, right before the election, suddenly sportswriters are attacking each other waving the morality finger with some saying that they won’t vote for McGwire because of the alligations and others insisting that they will vote for McGwire and that those who don’t are hypocrites because in 2002 they would have voted yes, and in 1998 when the andro question was posed those same voters who were saying no were cheering on McGwire and claiming he saved the game.

For the mostpart, they’re right - at least in the hypocrite thing. Nothing changed between 1998 and 2002 and now; we knew Mark McGwire was on andro in 1998, we knew it in 2002, and we still know it now (although some tend to forget and label McGwire as an alleged steroid user instead of a confirmed similar-to-steroid user.) But the number one issue with McGwire which concerned me waiting for the results is that most of the voters seemed to be voting with complete disregard to McGwire’s actual career, and purely on the principle of whether or not someone who is accused of steroid use (and has a decent amount of evidence against him) should be elected to the Hall. Very few articles that explained why the author did or didn’t vote for McGwire actually touched upon his career or statistics; they mentioned that andro wasn’t illegal in 1998 and that shouldn’t be held against him (meh…), they mentioned that McGwire’s chase of Maris’ record “saved baseball” (it didn’t - Ripken’s chase could be argued as “saving baseball” a year removed from the strike, but McGwire/Sosa v. Maris was just interesting), they took moral stands that since performance enhancing drugs are wrong then voting for those who used them are wrong, they used the “there have always been drugs in baseball” argument… but few gave reasons for including or keeping out McGwire that didn’t hinge strongly on the performance enhancer issue. Doing that is as bad as the Belle thing - it’s sticking your head in the sand and refusing to listen to reason one way or another not because of on the field performance, but of personal opinion of that person’s character.