Every Year the Hall of Fame Sucks Away My Will to Live
The baseball community is right in the middle of one of my least favorite times of the year; Hall of Fame season. It’s such a dreadful period for baseball discussion and analysis. I know people think it’s over the top to say something like “I’d rather gouge my eyes out than…” They’re not wrong, it is ridiculously over the top, but consider this; how many Hall of Fame discussions have those people had to scroll through on their Twitter feeds (or on Off The Bench)?
The National Baseball Hall of Fame is much to blame for the present state of the Hall of Fame discussion. They have instituted lax directives to voters and have really made a mess of many different aspects of Hall of Fame voting. They have been neglectful of the Negro Leagues, women’s baseball, and really, any professional baseball that is not Major League Baseball. They’ve also instituted the valid, yet wholly misapplied and unenforced, character clause (more on that later). As far as being an overseeing institution goes the Hall of Fame itself contributes a whole lot of bad to the discourse.
The main voting body of the Hall of Fame, the Baseball Writers Association of America, shoulders just as much blame. They are by and large a male-dominated, old, and pretty convincingly racist group that does everything they can to make the voting process about them rather than the players up for consideration. They will game their votes to make sure that certain players don’t receive 100% on the cumulative ballots. BBWAA members are extremely erratic in who they support and why. The BBWAA spends more time worrying about the spotlight shining on them and their blank message ballots than they do the actual players they are voting on.
The statistical movement within baseball over the last 30 odd years manages to avoid much scrutiny for the damage they have caused to the Hall of Fame process. As is usual with that community, of which I am a very lowly member, they started with the best of intentions but never stopped to think about the ramifications of removing all other factors other than stats from evaluating a player. Specifically, the Wins Above Replacement, as well as the Jaffe WAR Score System, statistics have become a stop sign. Not only to players being inducted but to any discussion of whether players should qualify for inclusion. Nothing makes me roll my eyes more than scrolling past a discussion that is centered on how Player Y does or not deserve to be in the Hall based solely on their career WAR, or JAWS.
Then there is that pesky character clause. Watching or hearing people tie themselves into knots over whether or not this domestic abuser or that racist should be included is so, so tiring. The purpose of a character clause is exactly that, to judge someone’s character. If someone is racist then they have terrible character. The National Baseball Hall of Fame itself could have solved this by giving much clearer direction on its character clause. Alas, they didn’t and we have to deal with year after year of people conflating steroid use as being on the same level as beating up your significant other.
If I sound down on the entire Hall process that’s because I am. I’ve come to not just be irritated by the institution but to despite it and everything it has come to represent. More than anything I wish people would stop having such banal and meaningless discussions about the institution. Or, at the very least, I would like them to stop telling on themselves when it comes to issues like misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, etc. Just nuke the entire process and let any discussion of it drift away for eternity, now that’s a Hall of Fame discussion I can get behind.
