I'm not trying to trump Hindman's nice effort here. I also didn't want to hog his colum space.
I do want to address what needs to take place, during our now present youth generation.
The HOF is about History, but it is most important to have that History in a correct form.
TRUTH, hopefully before 3013...

The Baseball Hall of Fame - Cooperstown, New York, USA

Truths are sometimes hard to swallow, but as History should be... the truth IS the correct form.
It may take years to correct the wrongs, but it is the right thing to do. For you, your children, et all.
I don't want the Baseball Hall of Fame to be talked in vane, as Santa, Easter Bunny or a Tooth Fairy.

"The Hall" is Hallowed and that's the problem. Baseball is full of characters. Not all cleaned & pressed.
It's also driven by records of play. The mind-set has to morph and change. It has to start with the present
youth generations. Ones that did not live through or experience(unlike me), "The Golden Age of Baseball",
Circa: 1950's and 1960's.

Baseball was challenged in the 70's, by the merger of the AFL/NFL. The new merger brought a monetary
burden upon "The Great American Pastime". The TV market was changing the face of Sports. Baseball,
for the first time, was losing market share & entertainment dollar to the NEW revised, action packed NFL.

Unfortunately, Baseball scurried to make "thier product" more palatable for TV viewing. Baseball was said,
by the average viewer, to be too long & very slow. It did not translate to TV as it did in radio form. Radio
was dying. By 1968, most Americans now had a TV in every house. Baseball was changing- not for the better.

The Designated Hitter was introduced. Pitching mounds lowered to promote more action with more offense.
To top the lunacy & fracturing, the biggest TV drawing card, New York Yankees, were a dying franchise.
During this period, owners, mgrs & writers started to look the other way. Beer & whiskey were Old School.

Cocaine was still looked at as "No No", but it was Disco Days of dance & song. Reefer & blow were the norm.
After all, snow hadn't been proven addictive, yet. Free agent money flowed & times were of celebration.
Still, owners, managers & writers looked the other way. Even when "the needle" was first clubhouse seen.
Of course, it was about recoup: torn muscles for recovery & mending. Hey, everybody did it... at least most.

Baseball players never lifted weights untill now. Bulking was starting to show into the early 1980's. Brutes that
made the Giant of Foxx, Greenberg, Mantle & Ruth, look like the new word of the decade, "Couch Pottato".
Old, aging ballfields were gone. Replaced by band boxes that would swallow majestic towering HR's of 440+ ft.
T'was the time of the 3Run Homer. Only Rickey Henderson, played the likes of Cobb, Brock & Wills on paths.
Rarely will the day be seen of Grove, Spahn, Marichal or Gibson. Complete games, short mounds? Past gone.
Staffs, built strong, stellar shape, but can't finish a game without multi bullpen help. Oh, Look the other way.

Of course, we know that full blown steroid era raised it's head near mid-1980's. Was it the dirty deed stated?
It depends on how the "HOF" voters eventually view a period of time. The shock has worn off for me. I can see
clearly now(without "clear"). I'm not happy that Judge Landis looked the other way on Tris Speaker & Ty Cobb
for betting on Baseball, but pissed Joe(patsy)Jackson is frozen out lifetime from Hallowed Hall... same Landis.

Yeah, Kennasaw Mountain Landis, MR. BIG INTEGRITY: NEW Commissioner of Baseball... (lt started here)
Look the other way.

Likes of Clements, Bonds, Palmeiro, Sosa may not make the HOF in my time. Nor Pete Rose either (big sigh).
I do know there'll always be gel, pill, shot or yes, an operation, that will improve & enhance top performance.
Just ask me ONCE, when "stem cell tech" duely arrives...roll back my clock, say 20-30 years? YES, please!
If it does not happen, I will leave this HOF turnover to youth. Change all lies to truths & though not the same,
will very much be and certainly will be relevant in TRUTHS.

All owners, GM's, mgrs, players & clubhouse guys, don't turn your head. Look yourself in the mirror.
Writers, please rewrite History, as it should be. Right the wrongs & be open for change.
"The Baseball Hall of Fame", is a true history of America itself. Bad with the Good.
Ruth's HR record fell in 1961. There's nothing, no record, too sacred there since...
Let the Ghost of Shoeless Joe rest... maybe in 100 years, Clone Tech will bring Joe back to the Diamond.
Hey, don't put it past ANY owner in the next century of my beloved Baseball.
Don't... Just look the other way.

As I read through your post, and I think the overall point is in agreement with lots of people: the HOF has been inconsistent with its treatment of cheaters. The fans have accepted that the Steroid Era was a part of baseball. We have the dead ball era and this is something similar. Players took steps to make themselves better ball players, and the league subsequently modified the rules to bring them in check. Every sport does this, and every sport will continue to do so.

The hypocrisy seen by many is that MLB waited too long in making the necessary adjustments, relishing the increase in attention and revenue that the PED era brought with it. And now the BBWAA is trying to right the wrongs by disallowing these players from enshrinement. They're trying to preserve a perfect history from an imperfect past, and that's a disservice.

That being said, I almost didn't read this at all. You may make valid points, but sometimes I don't know. And I don't know because I can't read full length essays written in the rambling stream of consciousness that Hubz employs. It makes my brain hurt. The rules governing run-ons, fragments, capitalization, punctuation, etc., were introduced for a reason.

This was more coherent than many of the things I normally see you write, but between your writing style and some of your (seemingly) ridiculous claims you bandy around, oftentimes I just pass over your response. Sorry.

What TankTheFrank said...

I have to agree with Franky on this one, HubZ. I read your title then skipped directly to his first reply. It's too close to Friday to put my brain through a paragraph that long.

I did notice you incorporated the tooth fairy though, so you get bonus points for that.

I recognize all the words, but...

I agree with Frank. There are rules to writing for a reason. List of stream-of-consciousness thoughts haven't caught on because they don't communicate very well.

I think the BBWAA has go to go as the voting body. They posses this holier than thou attitude towards protecting the "integrity" of the game, but they are terrible at it, and very inconsistent at best.

Here's the deal. These players haven't been banned by the HoF or Major League Baseball. Therefore, they deserve to be considered as the best players of their era, and of all time. 5 voters ridiculously sent blank ballots, and 4 didn't even bother to vote. Then you have the issue of voters who aren't going to vote for PED users or suspected ones at least. However, why would you then vote for Bonds, but not Sosa or Palmeiro. Did 600 suddenly not become enough home runs for the Hall? That's the inconsistency part as far as their voting.

However, there most inconsistent and unforgivable flaw is the their holier than thou, we are going to the right wrongs while ignoring our contribution to the problem attitude. Major League Baseball turned a blind eye to this problem, and even encouraged it as they stood by and raked in billions in record profits thanks to these players. The same goes for the owners. No writer ever got to have a better year as baseball writer than 1998, and yet they all ignored the steroids being used in the locker rooms right in front of them.

Now, these writers like to act as if they are without sin in this whole situation, and act as though they are the reason baseball was busted and turned around, but we all know if wasn't for Jose Canaeco's jealousy/financial hardship we may very well still be living in the steroid era.

*Disclaimer for the grammar Nazi's*: typing on my phone so may have been a few mistakes. I apologize

Et tu Brute?
Well, it's not Emily Post. It's just a simple Blog. I rarely edit, etc.
I've found that history(capitalized or not) does not interest most in here.
Thanks Buffy & Bif, I'll try to keep my right pinky up in the future. ta ta.

Colt, I think you hit on a major point with 'The Steroid Era.' Barry, Roger, even Sammy and Rafael are not banned and not given the Pete Rose-Shoeless Joe treatment. Thereof, to avoid appearing hypocritical should look at their level of play in the era they played. AND CLEARLY, BARRY AND ROGER ARE HOF WORTHY OF FIRST YEAR NOMINATIONS. Come 3013, which I re-interpret to 2113, they will be remembered for saving the game from a turbulent 1994 not destroying it. Hubz did hit on two things that perked my interest. I do remember the 50s and 60s, and what in a round-about way became the Texas Rangers played in a stadium that held 27,000 and was lucky to have more than 5000 fans watching any one non-Yankee game. So I do not know how golden it really was beyond radio, which I agree was an experience all it own. Because to quote Adrian Beltre, when he could not go and watch on TV, paraphrasing 'this game is boring', So the game as it always has fell to the true fans, which fits the description, whether you agree are not, everyone who regularly posts on this forum. And, 2. correlating with PED ERA is a major change in a pre-fundamental belief that with baseball , heavy body building type work outs were detrimental not beneficial. This also happened simultaneously or was even a precursor to PED. Professional body building and its competitions also went through an era of clean up of PEDs, even before baseball. So my contention is that year-round workouts, and now even gyms are equipped in clubhouses, did much more than steroids on its own ever did to create that HOME RUN ERA. SO [knowing this is facious] should we now remove Nolan Ryan from THE HALL because when his team was at bat, he would work out on the power stationary bike giving him 'UNFAIR ADVANTAGE'.

Don't take it personally bro. If guys weren't actually interested in some of your points (and you make some excellent ones) they'd just blow you off.

I'm not huge on editing myself, but as a general courtesy, if you would like people to read what you obviously put a lot of effort in to, take a second to proof (or dumb it down?) for us.

Does PEDs [ ie steroids ] destroy a body. Just ask any professional wrestler, or many old professional body builders Unfortunately, some you can not ask because they are no longer here, but should be had they never touched a PED. Maybe all this shows is how powerful a response to a X-RANGER writing a book for profit can be.

@Hench
None taken, really.
Believe me, I'm not insecure, nor fragile.
I deserved the critique

@Les,
good point with the weight machines.
One can't listen to radio, without hearing the
constant pitch for testosterone treatment.

No offense intended Hubz, because this is far from solely addressed to you (I see media beating me to death with similar takes) ...

But, in response to what you have written, I gotta respond that I don't have much regard for these "how dare you leave them out" moralizing stories ...nor, for the "how dare you put them in" articles either.

The HOF is about honoring players that deserve to be honored. The actual criteria? Well, to be blunt, it's been left up to the voter to decide what his standard is, which means there's no such thing as the "right" vote or non-vote. All these mediots need to stop telling us how others should vote. Dude, cast your ballot however YOU want YOUR ballot to read, and be done with it without turning something frivolous into a morality play.

That's why there's a ballot, to allow a wide swath of the public (as represented by the writers who follow the sport) to decide who they want as their HOF heroes, by whatever them deem to be most important. If there's a consensus (greater than 75%), then there's a consensus. When there's not, then they didn't deserve the honor.

If it was about exceeding certain standards, the ballot could say, "You must vote for those with better than X HRs and Y Hits and Z BA for hitters, and A Ks and B ERA and C Wins for pitchers" and make it easy. But as much as we want it to be quantified by such numbers, it never has been. It's vague. It's a Hall of The-Guys-Most-Of-Us-Want-To-Honor, and that's fine by me. Save the angst for things that matter, like the cat stuck in the tree and the kid in the hospital.

@Davis
That was well written David. I too see your point & agree.
Platitudes change, just as our moral society changes.
We Americans like to tear our heros down in judgement.
Perfection is almost expected, yet we know Baseball is a
game of subtraction, not perfection. The bar is always higher.