Tag Archives: Hall of Fame

The MLB Hall of Fame and a problem that won’t go away

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We’re now a few days on from the results of the 2016 American National Baseball Hall of Fame ballots being announced.

Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Piazza will be inducted into Cooperstown this summer and both are fully deserving of the honour.

Griffey was always a certainty to be elected at the first time of asking and the only point of intrigue was whether he would be the first player voted in unanimously. He fell three votes short, being named on 437 of 440 ballots, and whilst it’s reasonable to query why he wasn’t selected by those three voters (as it’s reasonable to expect all voters to explain how their ballots), it shouldn’t take any attention away from the joy of Griffey’s election and celebration of his wonderful career.

Griffey’s percentage of 99.32 is a new record and this was picked up on by the BBC World Service, who invited me to comment on this historic event on their Sport Today programme on Thursday (the programme will be available on the BBC iPlayer for British residents for 30 days from transmission, with the Griffey section being on in the last five minutes or so of the show).

The Sport Today programme was also drawn to Griffey’s historic election in the context of baseball’s so-called steroid era and him being a standard-bearer as someone who ‘did it the right way’.

As I stated on the programme, the problem with it all is of course that the lack of drug testing prior to 2003/2004 means there often is little solid on which to base a judgement as to whether someone used drugs or not.

Griffey’s fellow 2016 class member Mike Piazza embodies this problem. He was elected at the fourth time of asking despite having a strong claim to being the greatest hitting catcher in the history of MLB to date. The case against him really came down to suspicions that he may have used steroids during his career.

Even in the case of someone like Griffey, the era in which he played means that there will always be some suspicion around the exceptional players of that time simply by virtue of them being exceptional.

That’s what really makes things difficult from the point of view of the Hall of Fame. Every era has great players and they deserve to be recognised as such, otherwise we may as well just whitewash the era out of baseball history altogether.

Except in a few cases of admissions of guilt (such as Mark McGwire) and strong evidence (Barry Bonds being the main example due to his BALCO links) there’s simply no way of knowing if a great player in that era took drugs.

What is even more difficult is deciding if suspected drug use was part of their greatness.

That will be irrelevant for some: a cheat is a cheat and whatever the actual ‘performance enhancement’ amounted to, the intent is enough to do for their Hall of Fame case. I’m sympathetic to this stance, but when it comes to the Hall of Fame I struggle to reconcile it with the fact that so many people in baseball at the time willingly turned a blind eye to it, and that the game benefitted handsomely as a result.

Would MLB be the multi-billion dollar industry it is today after the devastating 1994/95 player strike had it not been for McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s ‘run for 61’ and other such exhilarating moments that captivated people and brought them back to the sport? We’re often happy to judge other Hall of Famers by the era in which they played so are we being honest with ourselves by blacklisting certain players or is it just easing the conscience after the event?

There isn’t an easy answer to any of this.

Although there are signs that a growing number of voters are now simply casting ballots based on performance regardless of drug-use suspicions, that’s probably not going to result in a consistent approach to all players.

Certainly in the case of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, despite their vote percentage increasing this year, it will result in truly outstanding players not being in the Hall of Fame (whatever your thoughts on their alleged drug use, it’s difficult to make a credible case that they were not players of immense talent), whilst slightly lesser players are elected despite being guilty of the same alleged cheating.

As the process comes around every year for the foreseeable future, we’re just going to have to accept that the Hall of Fame will present a skewed version of the era and future generations will need to delve deeper into the history rather than relying on the designation as a Hall of Famer to tell you who were the greats of the age.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Over to the ‘Era Committee’

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WHGB11You would have thought this was a weekend in which the Baseball Hall of Fame could do no wrong.

Cooperstown promises to be the host to one of the most memorable induction ceremonies of recent times, in which the careers of well-respected greats in managers Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, Joe Torre, and players Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas will all be honoured.

However, Saturday’s announcement regarding changes to the Hall of Fame voting process have needlessly created a distraction from what should be a completely positive celebration of baseball’s history and all the good that the Hall should represent.

The controversy was created by a press release that was quickly thrown under the harsh spotlight of modern day social media:

“The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Board of Directors today announced changes to the rules for election for recently retired players, reducing the length of stay on the ballot for players from a maximum of 15 to 10 years, while installing a new balloting and registration process for Baseball Writers’ Association of America voting members.

The changes, effective immediately and to be reflected in 2015 Hall of Fame voting, are the first made by the Hall of Fame to the voting process since 1991 and just the second time the Baseball Hall of Fame has amended the rules for election since 1985”.

I’ve long been of the opinion that for the Major Leagues, where everything is documented and covered in so much detail, the 15-year ballot rule was a nonsense.

The Hall of Fame should be there to celebrate the elite, the select group who stood out from the rest. Opinions are the lifeblood of sport and so there will never be complete agreement on every player defined as a ‘great’, but if it takes 15 years of debate for 75 per cent of the voters to be convinced that someone deserves to be in the Hall of Fame then – unless the voting process is either completely inept or completely corrupt – designating them as such makes a mockery of the entire process.

The decision to reduce this period is welcome and whilst I would still consider ten years to be on the long side, it’s a sizeable step-change in the right direction.

However, there is deep suspicion surrounding the reasoning behind making this decision now and it is this that has caused the ensuing controversy.

A player remains on the ballot each year if they receive support from at least five per cent of the voters. If they go through the now-reduced balloting period yet don’t cross the 75 per cent threshold to be elected, they then move on to another process. As the Hall of Fame puts it: “Candidates would then move to the Era Committee system for review in perpetuity”.

The naming of the group as an “Era Committee” is instructive for our purposes and the kicker then comes in how the Hall of Fame has decided to implement the changes with regard to those currently eligible for election.

“Three candidates presently on the BBWAA ballot in years 10-15 will be grandfathered into this system and remain under consideration by the BBWAA for up to the full 15 years. Don Mattingly (15th year in 2015), Alan Trammell (14th year in 2015) and Lee Smith (13th year in 2015) will be eligible to remain on the BBWAA ballot for a maximum of 15 years of consideration”.

There is a clear and simple logic to ‘grandfathering’ those candidates who currently exceed the new ten year cut-off mark, but by doing so the Hall has very specifically excluded a lot of other players from the new system.

And they are the very players for whom the passage of time is currently seen as being crucial to evaluating their place in Cooperstown.

From Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire to Mike Piazza, the players of the so-called ‘steroid era’ are now more likely than ever to spend a decade in isolation. There’s no question that the issue of drug-taking – who did and who didn’t, what effect it had on their performances and whether ‘cheating’ by a little or a lot makes a difference anyway – is an extremely difficult one for those wanting to evaluate the best players.

The easiest approach of ignoring rumours and simply voting based on performances is attractive in some ways, especially as many were happy to turn a blind-eye to suspicions of drug use when it suited all to enjoy the ride and not to be the one to potentially kill the golden goose in the post-1994/95 player strike period. However, you sense that those who played the game without resorting to any drug-use would feel betrayed by such an approach.

So instead voters are left pondering a series of difficult questions to deal with, and it seems like the Hall has come to their rescue by making their ‘get out of jail free’ card easier to play. Let the debates play out over ten years, keeping players on the ballot without ever making a firm decision on them, and then leave it to the ‘steroid era committee’ to sort it all out for you.

That will be better for the voters, but will be a travesty to those players who deserve to be in Cooperstown but may now be condemned to a long wait and then a suggestion of gaining entry by the back door.