Only one word should have been applied to the gentleman who lives somewhere between distinguished and extinguished, depending upon your point of view. The word is proof.
Legitimate proof, ladies and gentlemen. Evidence, not estimation. Or, innuendo. Or, speculation. (Including and not limited to whatever is merely thought to have been inside his head the day he looked, depending upon your point of view, like a deer in the headlights or the smuggest sonofabitch in town before — thank you, again, Mr. Will — the House Committee on Sending Swell Messages to Kids.) Real steroids, not mere andro. Incontrovertible connection, not mere conjecture, contortions, or convolutions that the jacks didn’t jump without the juice.
Then — and only then — should anyone have thought about denying Mark McGwire the Hall of Fame.
There. I've said it. And that is my final word upon the matter qua McGwire, the better to acknowledge...
a) That Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, Jr. should have been no-brainer Hall of Famers without a single saying of nay. Anyone who said nay for any reason other than that of Mr. Bill Shannon ought to be drummed out of any serious baseball discourse, never mind out of any roll of Hall of Fame voters. (Anyone who says Ripken wouldn't have had his ticket punched at all without The Streak should be sentenced to season tickets ... for the Washington Generals.) Shannon has said he didn't vote for Gwynn or Ripken because they "were such obvious candidates they didn't need my vote. I wasn't thinking in terms of a 100 percent." Reasonable enough, allowing that his followup was how he had ten other candidates for whom he also wished to vote.
b) That (ha! you thought you'd escape without my mentioning this even once) the Hall vote ought not to be limited to the Baseball Writers Association of America. They ought to be part of the vote but not the alpha and the omega.
Roger Angell (he is not baseball's Homer; Homer was ancient Greece's Roger Angell) has no official say as to whom does or does not become a Hall of Famer. The very longtime (and hopefully to remain longer time) New Yorker essayist — whose prose poetry has compiled into six imperative volumes that only begin with The Summer Game and Five Seasons — does not get to vote for the Hall of Fame.
Allen Barra (he who has refined sabermetric analysis into simpler, more comprehensive terms, in two splendid books and numerous columns for The Wall Street Journal and other publications) does not get to vote for the Hall of Fame.
Charles Einstein, compiler of the invaluable Fireside Books of Baseball, biographer of Willie Mays, and still alive and well so far as anyone knows, does not get to vote. Bill James, who has revolutionised irrevocably the manner in which baseball players are conjugated statistically, whose work has surely influenced a few Hall of Fame votes (and whose chapter on the issue, in The Politics of Glory, republished as Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, influenced my thought on this issue in the first place), does not get to vote for the Hall of Fame. And neither does (he who needs little enough introduction) George F. Will.
Hall of Fame votes as the BBWAA has them do not belong to Marty Brennaman, Jim Brosnan, Joe Buck, Skip and Chip Caray, Will Carroll, Jerry Coleman, Bob Costas, Robert W. Creamer, Nicholas Dawidoff, John Dewan, Ron Fairly, Joe Garagiola, Peter Golenbock, Curt Gowdy, Ernie Harwell, Mark Harris, Keith Hernandez, Rex Hudler, Pat Jordan, Tony Kubek, Tim McCarver, Jon Miller, Rick Monday, Ross Porter, Ron Santo (who belongs in Cooperstown as a player, anyway), Tom Seaver (who is in Cooperstown as a player, anyway), Herb Score, Vin Scully, Steve Stone, John Thorn, Bob Uecker, Suzyn Waldman, Bob Wolff, and several dozen other baseball broadcasters and historians, incumbent and emeritus, who have seen at least as many (and often more) players play the game as the BBWAA has seen.
(For that matter, while they lived, Mel Allen, Red Barber, Jack Buck, Harry Caray, Ken Coleman, Bob Elson, Dizzy Dean, Russ Hodges, Frank Messer, Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson, George Plimpton, Bob Prince, Byrum Saam, and Chuck Thompson, to name a few, did not have Hall of Fame votes. And neither did one of baseball's most valuable historians, Harold Seymour.)
If you can explain to me a world in which Bob Costas can't vote for the Hall of Fame, but writers willing to convict and deny Mark McGwire without legitimate, tangible, and incontrovertible proof, evidence and not innuendo, connection and not conjecture, can vote for the Hall of Fame, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Dean.
January 11, 2007
Mike Round:
Jeff
For sheer stupidity, crassness and faux-popularism read Bill Plaschke’s column in the LA Times on McGwire and the HOF. I can’t be bothered to find out whether Plaschke has a vote but he’s the kind of cretin who’s likely to get one.
McGwire should be in the BBHOF, no question. He may or may not have taken steroids as opposed to “supplements” but the whole question is irrelevant. Whatever he did, he did it with the tacit approval of Bud Selig and the MLB owners. For 2 years he (and Sosa to a slightly lesser degree) carried the sport.
To deny McGwire the BBHOF is sheer hypocrisy.
By the way Jeff, don’t you think it’s a good thing that Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are denied a vote? The BBHOF is struggling to maintain its credibility as it is!
Cheers
Mike