Kill the Hall of Fame.

There are some who want to kill the win, i.e., ignore wins and losses in evaluating pitchers.  However, those same continue to engage in the predictable weeping and gnashing of teeth about the baseball Hall of Fame located in Cooperstown, NY, a place still inaccessible to public transportation, unless, of course, you foolishly include vehicular road traffic in that category.

There is already a Hall of Merit:

Monday, December 22, 2014

2015 Election Results - Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez & Curt Schilling elected to the Hall of Merit!

Congratulations to the Class of 2015! Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling have been elected to the Hall of Merit.

The election was dominated by pitchers. In addition to the top 3, Mike Mussina was a strong 4th, followed closely by John Smoltz. Gary Sheffield and Sammy Sosa were 6th and 7th, both with enough support that their eventual election looks inevitable.
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Clark Estate in Cooperstown, NY 
by Wknight94 talk via Wikimedia Commons

Not bad but judge for yourself and look at its history. The Cooperstown brick and mortar version outlived its usefulness long ago. Now it's just fuel for constant second rate bickering and hypocrisy. The hypocrisy reached its zenith a few years ago when the writers did not elect any players but still continued their tradition of annually designating one of themselves as a Hall of Fame recipient of their very own writers award. And now they complain about a backlog, which they created by not electing Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens, who could easily be excluded on their bad character exclusive of their use of performance enhancing drugs, and also Mike Piazza who has been caught up in the hesitation over Jeff Bagwell.
Then there are the players who are borderline at best, like Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, etc.  Finally, the golden oldies committee that recently rejected a bunch of players, including Dick Allen and Tony Oliva, who had already had more opportunities to be elected than they deserved.
Enough already! Stop! Just stop the nonsense!

Kill Cooperstown!

Maybe a new form can be created in the near future. Maybe not. But let's just consign the current baseball Hall of Fame to the dustbin of history and let it die with what little dignity it deserves.