Quote:
Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan
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It's so difficult to write about the HOF and criteria because the arguments tend to just be circular, "you can't have a HOF without X!"
In that article, he goes with:
"Do we really want to look up, 10 or 20 years from now, and find we've constructed a Hall of Fame that doesn't include:
(Lists a bunch of known steroid freaks, Mike Piazza, and for good measure, Pete Rose)"
What does that even mean? Will my life not be complete if I "look up" 20 years form now and see that Barry Bonds isn't in the HOF? Somehow, I think I'll manage. I'll say, "ya, he's not in the HOF because he cheated and pissed everyone off, it was a dark decade for baseball that isn't remembered well, most of those guys didn't end up getting in". Makes sense to me. Do we really need a "long, serious national conversation" about this (actual quote). It's an honor voted on by humans who have various critera and those guys didn't fit the bill. Maybe some of them will get in later. I have trouble understanding the idea that some people just HAVE to have this particular honor or its some kind of disaster. Bonds took a ton of drugs, it became known, he was very unpopular (for that and because of his personality), so he doesn't get honored. Fantastic. They don't get the votes, they don't get the votes. There's no one particular inherent correctness of voting that people have to comply with for the stars to align and for the world to make sense. The guys who vote don't want to honor them. It's their little club. Maybe some other group can invite Barry and Roger to a big banquette and they can give them a shiny plaque. That private club can have different opinions than this private club. It's all good.
Edit: And Stark and a lot of people also have severe butt-hurt about the idea that we can't know with 100% certainty who's a cheater and who isn't, so therefore we shouldn't punish anyone. Interesting theory, but I hope we never try it in real life. Do you know how many unpunished criminals are walking around? How many unknown cheaters there are competing in every sport today? How many teams and organizations play fast and loose with salary cap or recruiting rules without being detected? Life doesn't have a lot of "100%s". You sure as heck aren't going to pull that off in a Human-voting HOF. You just have to give up the idea. You're not going to have 500 voters who think exactly the same about everything. And that's not a terrible thing.