Boycott Hall of Fame announcement. Kill Cooperstown!

Fat chance that would succeed.  We Americans are congenital handicappers even without realizing it.  In baseball our favorites are: off season trades, in season trades, election to the Hall of Fame.

Caricature of
Charles Cunningham Boycott 1832-1897
Caption read "Boycott" January 29, 1881
Vanity Fair magazine
via Wikimedia Commons

The Hall of Fame announcement comes in early January.  We should ignore both the announcement and the instant analysis that will follow and pervade baseball talk for far too long.  Aren't you sick of all the junk?  Writers, who vote, complaining about the rules, the results and even about each other.  All the talking heads telling us how smart they are because they now know that players we never thought were Hall of Fame calibre when they were playing have become so the more time passes.

Kill the Hall of Fame.  Friday, December 26, 2014

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...

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 ...

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.
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Replace the Hall of Fame with a modern museum in New York or Chicago.  Saturday, January 3, 2015

You'd hardly know it was a museum...

New York and Chicago are the only two remaining cities with two teams and clearly they are America's number one and number two cities generally...  This new institution would be both (brick and mortar) and digital.  The one thing it should not be is a distraction from the history of baseball by over emphasising a system of selecting former players for induction into a hall of fame.

I understand that both football and basketball have halls of fame.  However, those sports have not burdened themselves with a morals clause as baseball has done ...

Hypocrisy and stupidity rule, both by the Hall itself and the writers who vote on candidates.
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Bud Selig: longest serving member of the Hall of Fame Board of Directors.  Monday, January 13, 2014

Allan Huber "Bud" Selig has been a director since 1976.  1976!  Selig has also been commissioner of the Major Baseball League since 1992...

But Bud Selig?  A director since 1976?  Who the heck knew that?  ...

I wonder how many commissioners have been directors, especially while they were commissioner.  Fay Vincent was commissioner 1989-1992 but he's not a director.  Of course, Selig and Reinsdorf, two current directors, led the group of owners who voted no confidence in Vincent forcing his resignation.  Selig then replaced Vincent and became acting commissioner.  He's still acting.

Conspicuous by their absence are any union leaders or writers.  The writers vote on the players for induction.  Maybe also being a director would be considered a conflict of interest.  Funny how that works.
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Cheating: batter/pitcher; on field/PED.  Saturday, April 12, 2014

For villainy most people would consider use of performance enhancing drugs (PED), including steroids.  That would probably yield:

Batters: Bonds, Rodriguez, Sosa, McGwire, Palmeiro, Ramirez, Sheffield.

Pitchers: Clemens, maybe Ryan.

Ignored would be head hunters like Martinez, Gibson, Bunning.

Pitchers use PED, too, but most baseball fans seem to ignore that.  In 2001 two 37 year old players set power season records: Barry Bonds (homers and home run rate) and Randy Johnson (strike out rate).  Who was upset that an old pitcher could set a power record?

And maybe it's not just recent batters who used PED...

... do pitchers only punish batters, not each other?  I've done research and found that pitchers usually only hit other pitchers who are also good batters, which means very few.

Do you favor the batter or the pitcher?

Whom do you want to punish more, those who break the rules of play or those who use PED?

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Boycott!  Boycott!  Boycott!