The Pecan Park Eagle

2018 BBWAA Hall of Fame Ballot

https://baseballhall.org/hof/2018-bbwaa-ballot

The Candidate Field

Here’s an even easier link for a display of the candidates that shows their stats, and their percentage of support from the BBWAA voters last time for multiple year candidates. Remember, a candidate must receive a 75% vote of support in 2018 to qualify for induction:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2018.shtml

Questions

Who gets into the HOF this year? (Please note: We didn’t ask who deserves induction. We asked, “Who gets in?”)

Will this year be the one in which the all time home run producer gets past his steroid association and get inducted for his between the lines HR and other power numbers?

How many generations will have to pass before the HOF and the American cultural ethos that condemns Pete Rose for gambling in favor of his own team as a manager will no longer ban his name as a candidate for the Hall? Or will that ever happen?

And how about Roger Clemens? Does he get into the HOF anytime soon?

Based upon his records and the passage of time, who else from the ‘roids-stain era looks like either a soon to be or eventual HOF addition?

How does Pete Rose clearly differ from Barry Bonds? Both hold all time career hitting marks that cry out for acknowledgement, but only Rose broke a baseball law that is printed and posted in every clubhouse in MLB: Baseball players are forbidden from gambling on baseball games, even if they only bet for their own teams. To our knowledge, there were no posted differential prohibitions against the use of certain HGH substances during the halcyon days of Barry Bonds.

How does the backbone of MLB go from praising Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998 for saving baseball from the stench of the 1994 lost World Series year into condemning them as candidates for the HOF ten years later and forgetting all about them twenty years later in 2018? In the meanwhile, the HOF uses the BBWAA voting process to induct Bud Selig into the HOF in 2017, even though he was one of the early cheerleaders for McGwire and Sosa as saviors of the game?

Then, in 2018, we see that candidates like Bonds and Clemens are creeping back up in the polls and may come close to induction this year. What does that mean? Have they each exhibited a tone of contrition that has been missing in McGwire and Sosa all these years? Or does it more simply mean that voters are tired of being asked the same questions every year – and by voting some of those with the most ardent supporters into the HOF – and permanently out of the annual nuisance category they occupy with the BBWAA – that their job as writer/electors gets easier in 2019?

The Bright Side

Like just about everything else, history will have the last word in this matter. So, maybe we should simply acknowledge the fact and let our survivors watch what happens with the Hall of Fame and dubious cases of inductee character over the next half century.

In the meanwhile, the situation reminds me a lot of that old story about Groucho Marx. When asked why he had not applied for membership at a country club in Hollywood that he seemed to enjoy as a guest, he explained his disinterest in doing so in these words: “I wouldn’t have any respect for a club that accepted me as a member.”

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