I've never been to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I've always wanted to go, and nearly went when Cal Ripken was inducted a few years ago. One of my best friends went with his dad and brother to Cal's induction ceremony and told me how awesome the sight was of seeing 100,000 people there for Cal and Tony Gwynn's speeches as they were added to the Hall.
Visiting the Hall is on my list of things to accomplish, so hopefully I'll get an opportunity to get there this summer. I have no definite plans to do that yet, mainly because I'm trying to save the cash for my trip to the Grand Cayman Islands in May. Still, it's always been a place I've wanted to see and experience.
My point is concerned with the voting process to get into the Hall. Barry Larkin was just voted in after having to wait several years to get a high enough percentage of the vote (players need at least 75% of the Baseball Writers of America to vote for them to gain admittance). Last year, Larkin had around 68%, so he was expected to get enough votes this year to get in. He ended up getting 86%, which is a ridiculous jump in votes.
Every year, talk strikes up on which retired players are eligible to be voted upon entering the Hall for the first time. Every now and then, a truly great player whose career is so memorable for what he had achieved is expected to be voted into the Hall in his first year of eligibility. Some recent examples of first year candidates are the aforementioned Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn, along with Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Smith, and Kirby Puckett. More often than not, players have to wait a year or more before they're voted in.
Question: What exactly is the point of making most players wait a couple years before they are voted in? In Barry Larkin's case, he was eligible for the Hall in 2009, so what point are the writers trying to make in having him wait three years before he could enter? I know that some of them are biased and say that the likes of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams didn't get 100% of the vote during their first year of eligibility, so no player should ever get 100% on the first go-round, but that's not really my point (though that is really stupid logic).
The Hall of Fame is for the absolute creme de la creme, right? Is there a layout to the players that I'm not aware of, where there's a special section for the guys who got in during their first year, versus those who had to wait a few years? When it's all said and done, who really remembers or cares about who got in when? Do we scoff at people like Bert Blyleven who had to wait 14 years before he finally got enough votes to get in? If the Hall's purpose is to celebrate the best players of all time, who exactly wins by having many players wait years before they get in?
And in the case of Barry Larkin, how did the voters magically decide, "Okay, after looking at Barry's body of work during his career for three years now, he deserves to get in the Hall"? His stats were his stats; they didn't change for the better since last year or the year before. Actually, the answer to my question about Larkin is pretty easy; the writers chose to vote him in because no other first-year candidate really blew them away, which goes back to my previous argument.
Maybe I'm being too simplistic with my view about the Hall of Fame. The way I see it, if a player's career was special enough to qualify him for the Hall of Fame, he should be voted in. He shouldn't have to wait 14 years to get enough votes to get him in. I'm not saying Bert Blyleven was as great a pitcher as Nolan Ryan was, but the fact of the matter is they're both in the Hall now. Their careers can certainly be evaluated differently - especially considering Ryan was a starter and Blyleven was a reliever - but fans touring the Hall won't think any less of Blyleven or his career because he had to wait 14 years before the writers voted him in. I could sort of understand players whose careers were somewhat borderline (the likes of Curt Schilling and Andy Pettite come to mind), but cases like Blyleven are extreme. Still, there are plenty of players who people make comments like, "Well, he may not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but he should get in eventually." What on earth does that mean? He's either great enough to be in the Hall or he's not!
Baseball is certainly not the only sport that does this, either. Every other major sport's Hall of Fame voting process is just as silly for all the same reasons as baseball, particularly football. I realize that there is a gray area in a lot of players' cases, namely who won championships during their career versus who didn't win any rings, but a player who was considered dominant at his respective position for a significant enough period of time should be eligible for being voted in the Hall without having to wait an extended number of years to get in. I know I probably opened a whole new can of worms by mentioning the phrase "for a significant period of time," but that's a separate debate all together. Either way, I don't understand the so-called logic of making a player wait several years before they're finally considered acceptable into the Hall.
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