HOF

Just a short conversation piece in Joey's absence.  I'm a bit under the weather and lack the energy to come up with something meatier. I promised to post this morning, so here you go.

Later today, we will learn the names of the inductees to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Class of 2013. And by most accounts, that means we will be told  that  there will be no inductees this year.  Or worse, undeserving players from the 80's like Jack Morris and Dale Murphy will make the cut while obvious choices who were in their prime a decade later will not.

Barry Bonds will not make it.  Neither will Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire or Raffy Palmeiro. Nor will Jeff Bagwell or Mike Piazza, neither of whom were ever implicated in a PED scandal of any kind but who are "guilty" by virtue of having produced prodigious power numbers in the PED era.

In case you don't know, the Hall of Fame ballot is created by MLB and voted on by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Thus, the reason that Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Piazza will not be declared Hall of Famers - as all four should be (I'm not sold on McGwire, Bagwell or Palmeiro) - this afternoon is that the writers who were there in the clubhouses every day, at spring training every year, and who had a professional obligation to report on the game are now pretending to be shocked and offended by what they knew was going on right under their noses for 15 years but failed to expose, choosing instead to mythologize the beastly numbers these guys were putting up and the men who produced them.

If the BBWAA is serious about continuing to ride their high horse, here is what I want to see from them:  I would like them to form a committee to research and identify every pitcher currently enshrined who was ever accused of doctoring a baseball and excommunicate him from the Hall (starting with Gaylord Perry, Whitey Ford and Don Sutton).  

Likewise, every player who was ever accused of or admitted to taking amphetamines (Mike Schmidt, you are out) or turning his spikes into razor blades to deter middle infielders from defending stolen base attempts (Ty Cobb) must be ousted immediately in order to maintain the imagined purity of the Hall.  

Moroever, I would hope that when it come time to vote for any writers or executives who were active and "looked the other way" during the PED era (all of them), the BBWAA will refuse to vote for them too. They created and enabled the era as much as the players. 

This thing is either going to be pure or it's not. For the BBWAA to exclude recent cheaters after looking the other way for nearly a century is completely arbitrary and capricious.