There's no point trying to pretend that great talent necessarily accompanies great character. That's true in pretty much all aspects of life; look at actors. I just don't see the point in trying to decide whose character makes him worth of being in the HOF and whose does not; we don't really know these people and never will. Just vote on whether they can play. I think Schilling (and Bonds and Clemens and Rose) should be in the Hall because they were great players. I certainly don't like Schilling's politics, but so what?
With regard to the comparison to the Hockey and Football HOF's, those voting panels are the only way that anyone will get into those Halls. Thus, the voters have a bit more pressure to put people in. With the Baseball HOF, the BBWAA voters know that they can leave out people they don't like and let the vets committees work things out later.
Let’s not continue perpetuating a myth that steroids didn’t influence play on the field. They were specifically designed for and taken to accomplish just that. And materially did so. Quite a different comp than ‘off field’ character issues. Has there been any discussion by Joe or on blog of the statistical analysis Fainaru-Wada & co. did for ESPN in December evidencing how much steroids influenced (inflated) the careers of Clemens, Bonds, etc.?
Agreed. As I read the study, Bonds and Clemens would be HOF players without the steroids. And let's not kid ourselves that players in the past would not have taken PEDs if they had been available. They took greenies, ie amphetamines.
Although this whole topic is getting quite boring, I do agree Schilling is different than most of the others. Although his appearance before Congress might set off some alarm bells, his lack of votes seems purely aimed at the fact that Schilling is one of the top tier jerks in all of America. Not just baseball. Based on his actual baseball, including clutch & key moments... although every fiber of my being strongly dislikes Schilling.... he should be in & it shouldn't really be controversial.
A regret: I was at the Hall for Joe’s book chat & signing (and of course the PosCast). I had to move my car midday & then caught some lunch, thereby missing the whole book-signing session. I bought an autographed copy at the gift shop but I’m disappointed I missed out on the chance to have Joe inscribe it to me.
Joe: do Bonds/Clemens/Schilling/Sosa have to wait an additional 5 years from now before being considered by the Eras Committees or are they all eligible next December? And would McGriff not be eligible next December since it's been fewer than 5 years since he was last on the ballot? Thanks!
I haven’t done a deep dive into it, but my sense is that a lot of voters got really self-conscious about the baseball aspect of their votes as criticism from sabermetricians piled up starting in the 80s. The analysts were doing good but honestly rather seat of the pants work and of course always changing their systems and using each one to chastise the voters over this or that induction or failure to induct. It will be recalled that the first version of the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract had Harland Clift as the tenth best third baseman in baseball history. That’s just a book in print so no one currently criticizes James for that, but HoF voters don’t get to go back and fix the inductions of prior panels, no matter how silly Freddy Lindstrom or Heinie Manush may seem in retrospect.
What I’m suggesting is there’s a lot of people who might get off high horses and calm down. In the end, as James suggested in his book on the Hall of Fame, it’s just a tourist attraction in a town in New York (yeah, I’ve been there) that was located based on a readily-debunked myth about the origins of the sport.
So how about a “Baseball Ten (or 20 or 30) that is a combination of the best Baseball Person AND the best PERSON. I would suspect that Henry Aaron would be in there, but not Ty Cobb (or Barry Bonds for that matter). And on the flip side, how about a a Top Ten most abhorrent Hall of Famers? One last thing…..I have heard that Doyle Alexander was the most unpleasant person to play in the major leagues (who my Tigers traded John Smoltz for!)
The Alexander trade is interesting because the Tigers got exactly what they traded for. A guy who went 9-0 down the stretch and helped them get to the ALCS. Obviously, it went down hill from there as the trade ended up losing them a HOFer. But how many championships would Smoltz have given the Tigers? After that year, the Tigers were really bad until 2006 when Smoltz was age 39, and the Tigers lost the WS to the Cardinals. I guess you could argue that Smoltz still had enough in the tank to potentially help the Tigers. But I don't see how he turns around a 4-1 Series loss. And it's pretty damned likely that Smoltz would not have stayed on a historically bad Tigers team during his prime after he hit free agency.
I was a Braves fan so obviously I liked the trade. But I agree with you. One player wasn't going to make some of those Tiger teams much better. And if the Tigers had gotten to the World Series with Alexander, as the saying goes, flags fly forever. Sometimes you have to go for it. And Alexander did his part. The Tigers just couldn't get past the Twins.
Have you ever read Mike Freeman's "All-Time Biggest Sports Jerks" ? It's a pretty good read and it's mostly light-hearted. Check it out sometime! Another book that doesn't get enough pub is Tom Bunevich's "Sign This" and "Sign This #2" books. They give great insight as to which players were great to work with and great with the public at autograph shows. They're both terrific books!
I hadn't heard that about Doyle Alexander. I've heard all kinds of stories about Dave Kingman, though. Dude was a total tool and was hated by basically everyone, lol. On the flipside there have been some awesome people, too, of course.
I’m not proud, but after the past, say, five years, I’m more than tired. Schilling? Obnoxious, offensive, tiresome Shilling? The guy was also the author of rare moments that are worth lingering over. And if I don’t start latching on to the good in this world, I’m going to be crushed by it. Someone once said: In a man's work there is a gravity which he himself does not possess. And so Shilling gets my humble nod for a work worth celebrating.
A friend and I have argued for years about the Hall. One of his contentions, when I say that all ballots should be public, is to compare a Hall ballot to a private vote for President, etc.
It’s nonsense, of course. A vote for President is a right; a vote for the Hall is a very exclusive privilege and with great power comes great responsibility (I made that up) ;)
Dan Shaughnessy’s nonsense vote for one player is not responsible, though it is public, to give him credit. Should voters who pull stunts like that have their privilege rescinded?
Dan Shaughnessy - who I personally can't stand - can vote however he wants to vote. I mean, is voting for just Jeff Kent any worse than not voting for anyone? Maybe so, maybe not. If fans don't like it, that's fine, we can all have a laugh at Shaughnessy and then we can all move on. But having his privilege rescinded for not voting the way other people think he should vote? That's crazy! It's also really, really arrogant, as if the fans get to dictate who the writers vote for. We didn't earn the privilege...Shaughnessy did. So we should keep ourselves in check.
I personally love having the private ballots out there because I think those writers are probably a bit more true to their own beliefs and ideas and gut feelings. They don't have to worry about whether or not their ballot is popular with fans. They don't have to worry about answering to anyone. And why should they? They DON'T answer to anyone regarding this! It's their choice, not ours (as fans). It's THEIR privilege, not ours. It's THEIR opinion that matters about who gets into the HOF, not ours. I think too many BBWAA writers, specifically the ones who make their ballots public AND make them public on social media, do so with some sort of agenda. Either they're trying to be the cool kids who vote for the players the fans approve of or they're the rebels doing just the opposite or they're the sticklers who are proud to uphold the invisible baseball standards or they're in it for simple shock value. Obviously not ALL of the writers are like that, but many unquestionably are. HOF voters are now getting more famous for checking boxes than they ever got for actually writing anything. Think about that. Guys can get more clicks for publishing one HOF ballot...than for 30 years of writing about baseball.
Ultimately, this is all just for fun, anyway. It's all trivial. I check the Tibs site usually twice per day and I analyze all of this stuff just because it's a fun diversion. And that's how it should be.
The Hall gave them the privilege to vote for whomever they deemed worthy. So why would the Hall revoke or rescind the privilege for not voting the way the Hall wants them to?
If the Hall feels like they are not making an honest effort to select the most qualified candidates, according to the Hall's criteria, the Hall should absolutely have a choice to rescind the privilege. With warnings and due process and all that.
Why should the Hall maintain a voting privilege to someone not taking it seriously?
This is like most things in life. If my job assigns me to lead a project as I see fit, but then I do a crummy job of it, they are going to step in at some point.
He still did nothing wrong, though, and that's the whole point. And the Hall does take care of actual voter idiocy. Does the name Dan LeBetard ring a bell? He put his vote to a poll, the HOF got angry and pulled his privileges. End of story. The Hall polices their own just fine.
I had forgotten about LeBatard. Sounds like we are in violent agreement then, unless you think the Hall should not have pulled LeBatard's vote. The HoF can, should, and does police their own.
Ohhhhh so you just make claims about people without bothering to provide evidence? Gotcha! It's almost like you don't care about due process, libel, slander, or cancel culture. Good for you, Adam, you are definitely more woke than I am =)
There's more than one example, but the most prominent is the Adam Jones incident. Schilling started by saying that he thought Jones was lying about being called racial slurs. OK. He followed that up by saying that he never heard any player called a racial slur. Hmmmm. Then he said that calling a player a racial slur was OK anyways because black people use the slur with one another all the time. At best that's nonsense and insensitive towards what Jones was saying that he was going through. At worst, it's denialism, which is a tool of white supremacists who want to claim that black people are actually getting advantages from being black. Which, negatively impacts white people. So, in that context, it's a racist trope.
To add to that, I know that not everyone will take that to mean he might be a racist. That's fine. But there absolutely is enough there for one to reasonably believe he's a racist.
Explaining the symbolism in the Confederate Flag makes him racist? I see. So are people who explain what the symbols in the American Flag mean racist, too? Or is it just certain flags?
I'm sorry, was that too much reading for you? Should I use shorter words?
Well, if you don't know what's different about the Confederate Flag vs the American Flag, I don't know what to tell you.
It wasn't his explanation of the flag that was racist, it was his justifying a state flying it. And that was less offensive than the Nazi/Islam post.
I am done interacting with you. It was fun for a while, but you repeatedly misinterpret what I say, extrapolate things that I didn't, and have become rather nasty. Good day sir/madam.
"I’m not saying this is right or wrong — people will always argue (and it’s a fair argument) that it is this sort of persnickety voting that makes the Baseball Hall of Fame the most exclusive and best Hall of Fame."
But it's not even the BEST Hall of Fame, either - unless you mean the best at being ridiculous and irrelevant. A Hall that has (for examples) Jack Morris, HAROLD BAINES, Bud Selig but not Bonds, Clemens, Lofton is a Hall that values... I don't know what. Faux Morality? Cherry Picking? Writer Virtue Signaling? Proud Ignorance? Fairy Tales? I'm at a loss.
The HoF used to be a really big deal to me. Now...well, if they're not gonna take it seriously, I don't know why I should.
I've been a regular at High Heat Stats for a long time - a tiny baseball website with a devoted group of fans. It grew out of the old Baseball-Reference blog and became its own thing.
Anyway, seven years ago, we were having a Curt Schilling discussion... when Curt showed up in the comments on the blog! Verified by himself on Twitter, no less.
The things is, I've never been able to shake the question: how/why did Schilling end up there? He's not a regular; never posted nor commented after that post. Does he just google his own name every once in a while? Was he looking at his own player page on Baseball-Reference, saw that he was being talked about somewhere, and insisted on clicking over to it? It's always just weirded me out. It always struck me as an odd thing to do. Like, have you EVER heard of an actual MLB player getting involved in nonsense discussions on a TINY baseball site on the web? It's just so out-of-character for guys who have to deal with CONSTANT scrutiny in the media and the public eye. Why so petty, or thin-skinned, or self-interested? Maybe it was just a one-time thing, and it was dumb luck. But it's always struck me as revealing about the man. Revealing WHAT, I'm not sure. But I'm sure it reveals something...
That's an interesting and fun thread. His post didn't strike me as odd. Seemed somewhat genuine -- which feels at odds with the red light Curt persona (which is undoubtedly a real part of his personality). I know he's a fan of baseball history -- and a guy who spends way way too much time on the internet. Maybe he reads that site, who knows.
Man, I wish he weren't such a dolt. He deserves the hall of fame based on his numbers. But he just keeps opening his yap and jamming his tendon-stitched leg in it.
(Loved the discussion you posted; I'll have to bookmark the site.)
When Joe's baseball 100 article for the Athletic for Schilling was posted, someone claiming to be Schilling showed up in the comments. Don't know if it was really him, but he's definitely super image-conscious.
There was some story about him agreeing he should exit a game, and then made a big show of arguing with his manager in front of the cameras. It paints the picture of a very vain person.
"I don’t think anyone will be surprised to know that baseball’s best players are not always baseball’s best people, that baseball’s best players do not always play the game fairly, that baseball’s best players sometimes have opinions that will offend a large number of people, etc. Because that’s humanity too."
Hmmmm. Sounds like . . . uhhh, pretty much everything else in our world these days. Substitute "baseball's best players" with "Hollywood's best actors" or "Great Britain's best childrens'/fantasy writers" or "America's best stand-up comedians" and it invariably leads to Joe's summation: "Because that's humanity too."
The HOF/BBWAA has lost the roadmap. But in 2022, that's humanity too. Hopefully the HOF/BBWAA -- like the rest of humanity -- will rediscover it.
"The Hall of Fame vote seems to be about everything BUT baseball."
With the "Character Issues" and politics I completely agree. There are plenty of A-holes in the HOF and being a jerk should not take away from what you did on the field.
The steroid cloud on the other hand IS about baseball - Regardless what you think, steroids did enhance what they did on the field - It is cheating. And therefore Clemens, Bonds and the rest can rot outside the hall.
You're right; amphetamines likely had a bigger impact on the game, when you consider what the aging curve looks like now compared to the era when greenies were widely taken. I mean, Willie Mays himself said it was like the game was moving in slow motion when he took amphetamines.
Excellent point, Tony. People look in judgment on Bonds' late career dinger surge, but no one talks about Henry Aaron's. Hammerin' Hank hit more homers in the first 7 seasons after his age 27 season than he did in his first 7 seasons. He admitted to taking greenies, an illegal substance. Today, he would've been banned.
Did the greenies help him? He certainly thought it did. Do you think sportswriters would've voted him in into the Hall if they knew he took them?
If you want to use Aaron's own admission on amphetamines, you need to complete the quote. He says he used them once, didn't like how they made him feel (totally believable on a personal level, because I used them once & quit for the same reason), and never used them again. So, keep these discussions in context. There are others, I"m sure, that you can use for your amphetamine poster child. I can also say, again from experience, amphetamines are pretty overrated because of the negative effects that come with them. I find it hard to believe that they actually helped anyone long term. Maybe here and there when they were having a tough night on the road. But long term, I think they'd tear pretty much everyone apart.
He also went from playing half his games in a pitcher's park to a bigtime hitter's part when his team moved to Atlanta. I vaguely recall seeing analysis from Bill James showing that's why his home run patterns looked the way they did.
Predictably, you missed the point. You said those guys shouldn't get it because they're cheaters. What do you say about the other cheaters already in? Isn't that a double standard? And don't go with, "writers probably didn't know they were cheaters." For one example, John McGraw was one of the biggest cheaters when he played w/ the Baltimore Orioles in the 1890s and it was well documented. He was adhering to the gamesmanship adage that many people hold, "if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough."
I'm not condoning it, I'm just recognizing the reality that's a little more complicated than your simple morality of "cheating." Why is one form of cheating acceptable and another is not?
We all know why Shaughnessy submitted a Kent only ballot. It was so everyone would discuss why Shaughnessy submitted a Kent ballot. That’s the worst kind of voter and writer.
Precisely this. What does he do for an encore performance next year? I think the Kent only ballot went under the radar last year so he got the needed attention this year. A Vizquel only ballot next year seems like the logical next step.
There's no point trying to pretend that great talent necessarily accompanies great character. That's true in pretty much all aspects of life; look at actors. I just don't see the point in trying to decide whose character makes him worth of being in the HOF and whose does not; we don't really know these people and never will. Just vote on whether they can play. I think Schilling (and Bonds and Clemens and Rose) should be in the Hall because they were great players. I certainly don't like Schilling's politics, but so what?
With regard to the comparison to the Hockey and Football HOF's, those voting panels are the only way that anyone will get into those Halls. Thus, the voters have a bit more pressure to put people in. With the Baseball HOF, the BBWAA voters know that they can leave out people they don't like and let the vets committees work things out later.
Let’s not continue perpetuating a myth that steroids didn’t influence play on the field. They were specifically designed for and taken to accomplish just that. And materially did so. Quite a different comp than ‘off field’ character issues. Has there been any discussion by Joe or on blog of the statistical analysis Fainaru-Wada & co. did for ESPN in December evidencing how much steroids influenced (inflated) the careers of Clemens, Bonds, etc.?
Is anyone actually arguing for that myth? Pretty sure the people voting for them in the HoF aren't saying PEDs had no impact.
Agreed. As I read the study, Bonds and Clemens would be HOF players without the steroids. And let's not kid ourselves that players in the past would not have taken PEDs if they had been available. They took greenies, ie amphetamines.
My opinion: PED users cheated to become better ballplayers. Nobody spoke controversially or acted like a jerk in order to improve their skill set.
Although this whole topic is getting quite boring, I do agree Schilling is different than most of the others. Although his appearance before Congress might set off some alarm bells, his lack of votes seems purely aimed at the fact that Schilling is one of the top tier jerks in all of America. Not just baseball. Based on his actual baseball, including clutch & key moments... although every fiber of my being strongly dislikes Schilling.... he should be in & it shouldn't really be controversial.
A regret: I was at the Hall for Joe’s book chat & signing (and of course the PosCast). I had to move my car midday & then caught some lunch, thereby missing the whole book-signing session. I bought an autographed copy at the gift shop but I’m disappointed I missed out on the chance to have Joe inscribe it to me.
Joe: do Bonds/Clemens/Schilling/Sosa have to wait an additional 5 years from now before being considered by the Eras Committees or are they all eligible next December? And would McGriff not be eligible next December since it's been fewer than 5 years since he was last on the ballot? Thanks!
I haven’t done a deep dive into it, but my sense is that a lot of voters got really self-conscious about the baseball aspect of their votes as criticism from sabermetricians piled up starting in the 80s. The analysts were doing good but honestly rather seat of the pants work and of course always changing their systems and using each one to chastise the voters over this or that induction or failure to induct. It will be recalled that the first version of the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract had Harland Clift as the tenth best third baseman in baseball history. That’s just a book in print so no one currently criticizes James for that, but HoF voters don’t get to go back and fix the inductions of prior panels, no matter how silly Freddy Lindstrom or Heinie Manush may seem in retrospect.
What I’m suggesting is there’s a lot of people who might get off high horses and calm down. In the end, as James suggested in his book on the Hall of Fame, it’s just a tourist attraction in a town in New York (yeah, I’ve been there) that was located based on a readily-debunked myth about the origins of the sport.
So how about a “Baseball Ten (or 20 or 30) that is a combination of the best Baseball Person AND the best PERSON. I would suspect that Henry Aaron would be in there, but not Ty Cobb (or Barry Bonds for that matter). And on the flip side, how about a a Top Ten most abhorrent Hall of Famers? One last thing…..I have heard that Doyle Alexander was the most unpleasant person to play in the major leagues (who my Tigers traded John Smoltz for!)
The Alexander trade is interesting because the Tigers got exactly what they traded for. A guy who went 9-0 down the stretch and helped them get to the ALCS. Obviously, it went down hill from there as the trade ended up losing them a HOFer. But how many championships would Smoltz have given the Tigers? After that year, the Tigers were really bad until 2006 when Smoltz was age 39, and the Tigers lost the WS to the Cardinals. I guess you could argue that Smoltz still had enough in the tank to potentially help the Tigers. But I don't see how he turns around a 4-1 Series loss. And it's pretty damned likely that Smoltz would not have stayed on a historically bad Tigers team during his prime after he hit free agency.
I was a Braves fan so obviously I liked the trade. But I agree with you. One player wasn't going to make some of those Tiger teams much better. And if the Tigers had gotten to the World Series with Alexander, as the saying goes, flags fly forever. Sometimes you have to go for it. And Alexander did his part. The Tigers just couldn't get past the Twins.
Have you ever read Mike Freeman's "All-Time Biggest Sports Jerks" ? It's a pretty good read and it's mostly light-hearted. Check it out sometime! Another book that doesn't get enough pub is Tom Bunevich's "Sign This" and "Sign This #2" books. They give great insight as to which players were great to work with and great with the public at autograph shows. They're both terrific books!
I hadn't heard that about Doyle Alexander. I've heard all kinds of stories about Dave Kingman, though. Dude was a total tool and was hated by basically everyone, lol. On the flipside there have been some awesome people, too, of course.
I’m not proud, but after the past, say, five years, I’m more than tired. Schilling? Obnoxious, offensive, tiresome Shilling? The guy was also the author of rare moments that are worth lingering over. And if I don’t start latching on to the good in this world, I’m going to be crushed by it. Someone once said: In a man's work there is a gravity which he himself does not possess. And so Shilling gets my humble nod for a work worth celebrating.
A friend and I have argued for years about the Hall. One of his contentions, when I say that all ballots should be public, is to compare a Hall ballot to a private vote for President, etc.
It’s nonsense, of course. A vote for President is a right; a vote for the Hall is a very exclusive privilege and with great power comes great responsibility (I made that up) ;)
Dan Shaughnessy’s nonsense vote for one player is not responsible, though it is public, to give him credit. Should voters who pull stunts like that have their privilege rescinded?
Dan Shaughnessy - who I personally can't stand - can vote however he wants to vote. I mean, is voting for just Jeff Kent any worse than not voting for anyone? Maybe so, maybe not. If fans don't like it, that's fine, we can all have a laugh at Shaughnessy and then we can all move on. But having his privilege rescinded for not voting the way other people think he should vote? That's crazy! It's also really, really arrogant, as if the fans get to dictate who the writers vote for. We didn't earn the privilege...Shaughnessy did. So we should keep ourselves in check.
I personally love having the private ballots out there because I think those writers are probably a bit more true to their own beliefs and ideas and gut feelings. They don't have to worry about whether or not their ballot is popular with fans. They don't have to worry about answering to anyone. And why should they? They DON'T answer to anyone regarding this! It's their choice, not ours (as fans). It's THEIR privilege, not ours. It's THEIR opinion that matters about who gets into the HOF, not ours. I think too many BBWAA writers, specifically the ones who make their ballots public AND make them public on social media, do so with some sort of agenda. Either they're trying to be the cool kids who vote for the players the fans approve of or they're the rebels doing just the opposite or they're the sticklers who are proud to uphold the invisible baseball standards or they're in it for simple shock value. Obviously not ALL of the writers are like that, but many unquestionably are. HOF voters are now getting more famous for checking boxes than they ever got for actually writing anything. Think about that. Guys can get more clicks for publishing one HOF ballot...than for 30 years of writing about baseball.
Ultimately, this is all just for fun, anyway. It's all trivial. I check the Tibs site usually twice per day and I analyze all of this stuff just because it's a fun diversion. And that's how it should be.
They shouldn't answer to the fans, but they should answer to the Hall itself.
The Hall gave them the privilege to vote for whomever they deemed worthy. So why would the Hall revoke or rescind the privilege for not voting the way the Hall wants them to?
If the Hall feels like they are not making an honest effort to select the most qualified candidates, according to the Hall's criteria, the Hall should absolutely have a choice to rescind the privilege. With warnings and due process and all that.
Why should the Hall maintain a voting privilege to someone not taking it seriously?
This is like most things in life. If my job assigns me to lead a project as I see fit, but then I do a crummy job of it, they are going to step in at some point.
He still did nothing wrong, though, and that's the whole point. And the Hall does take care of actual voter idiocy. Does the name Dan LeBetard ring a bell? He put his vote to a poll, the HOF got angry and pulled his privileges. End of story. The Hall polices their own just fine.
No need to be antagonistic.
I had forgotten about LeBatard. Sounds like we are in violent agreement then, unless you think the Hall should not have pulled LeBatard's vote. The HoF can, should, and does police their own.
Yes, after a warning or two.
I'm curious: did you ever provide evidence of Curt Schilling's supposed racism that you kept bringing up in the Omar post? Just wondering.
Also, i never offered to post evidence. i see now that you asked for it at the end of some giant wall of text that i didn't bother to read.
Ohhhhh so you just make claims about people without bothering to provide evidence? Gotcha! It's almost like you don't care about due process, libel, slander, or cancel culture. Good for you, Adam, you are definitely more woke than I am =)
There's more than one example, but the most prominent is the Adam Jones incident. Schilling started by saying that he thought Jones was lying about being called racial slurs. OK. He followed that up by saying that he never heard any player called a racial slur. Hmmmm. Then he said that calling a player a racial slur was OK anyways because black people use the slur with one another all the time. At best that's nonsense and insensitive towards what Jones was saying that he was going through. At worst, it's denialism, which is a tool of white supremacists who want to claim that black people are actually getting advantages from being black. Which, negatively impacts white people. So, in that context, it's a racist trope.
um, this is an internet comment board. So yeah, I can make subjective claims of my opinions without providing evidence.
No. But a 2 second search found this.
https://www.thewrap.com/curt-schilling-8-of-his-most-controversial-statements-photos/
You don't need to look far.
To add to that, I know that not everyone will take that to mean he might be a racist. That's fine. But there absolutely is enough there for one to reasonably believe he's a racist.
Explaining the symbolism in the Confederate Flag makes him racist? I see. So are people who explain what the symbols in the American Flag mean racist, too? Or is it just certain flags?
I'm sorry, was that too much reading for you? Should I use shorter words?
Well, if you don't know what's different about the Confederate Flag vs the American Flag, I don't know what to tell you.
It wasn't his explanation of the flag that was racist, it was his justifying a state flying it. And that was less offensive than the Nazi/Islam post.
I am done interacting with you. It was fun for a while, but you repeatedly misinterpret what I say, extrapolate things that I didn't, and have become rather nasty. Good day sir/madam.
"I’m not saying this is right or wrong — people will always argue (and it’s a fair argument) that it is this sort of persnickety voting that makes the Baseball Hall of Fame the most exclusive and best Hall of Fame."
But it's not even the BEST Hall of Fame, either - unless you mean the best at being ridiculous and irrelevant. A Hall that has (for examples) Jack Morris, HAROLD BAINES, Bud Selig but not Bonds, Clemens, Lofton is a Hall that values... I don't know what. Faux Morality? Cherry Picking? Writer Virtue Signaling? Proud Ignorance? Fairy Tales? I'm at a loss.
The HoF used to be a really big deal to me. Now...well, if they're not gonna take it seriously, I don't know why I should.
The Bowling Hall of Fame in St Louis is a pretty cool hall of fame
So, Curt Schilling...
I've been a regular at High Heat Stats for a long time - a tiny baseball website with a devoted group of fans. It grew out of the old Baseball-Reference blog and became its own thing.
Anyway, seven years ago, we were having a Curt Schilling discussion... when Curt showed up in the comments on the blog! Verified by himself on Twitter, no less.
The things is, I've never been able to shake the question: how/why did Schilling end up there? He's not a regular; never posted nor commented after that post. Does he just google his own name every once in a while? Was he looking at his own player page on Baseball-Reference, saw that he was being talked about somewhere, and insisted on clicking over to it? It's always just weirded me out. It always struck me as an odd thing to do. Like, have you EVER heard of an actual MLB player getting involved in nonsense discussions on a TINY baseball site on the web? It's just so out-of-character for guys who have to deal with CONSTANT scrutiny in the media and the public eye. Why so petty, or thin-skinned, or self-interested? Maybe it was just a one-time thing, and it was dumb luck. But it's always struck me as revealing about the man. Revealing WHAT, I'm not sure. But I'm sure it reveals something...
Here's the actual post, if you're interested:
http://www.highheatstats.com/2012/10/lets-talk-about-curt-schilling/#comment-94270
That's an interesting and fun thread. His post didn't strike me as odd. Seemed somewhat genuine -- which feels at odds with the red light Curt persona (which is undoubtedly a real part of his personality). I know he's a fan of baseball history -- and a guy who spends way way too much time on the internet. Maybe he reads that site, who knows.
Man, I wish he weren't such a dolt. He deserves the hall of fame based on his numbers. But he just keeps opening his yap and jamming his tendon-stitched leg in it.
(Loved the discussion you posted; I'll have to bookmark the site.)
When Joe's baseball 100 article for the Athletic for Schilling was posted, someone claiming to be Schilling showed up in the comments. Don't know if it was really him, but he's definitely super image-conscious.
There was some story about him agreeing he should exit a game, and then made a big show of arguing with his manager in front of the cameras. It paints the picture of a very vain person.
There's a reason the '90s-era Phillies would always call him "Red Light Curt." Everything he did was a performance
"I don’t think anyone will be surprised to know that baseball’s best players are not always baseball’s best people, that baseball’s best players do not always play the game fairly, that baseball’s best players sometimes have opinions that will offend a large number of people, etc. Because that’s humanity too."
Hmmmm. Sounds like . . . uhhh, pretty much everything else in our world these days. Substitute "baseball's best players" with "Hollywood's best actors" or "Great Britain's best childrens'/fantasy writers" or "America's best stand-up comedians" and it invariably leads to Joe's summation: "Because that's humanity too."
The HOF/BBWAA has lost the roadmap. But in 2022, that's humanity too. Hopefully the HOF/BBWAA -- like the rest of humanity -- will rediscover it.
"The Hall of Fame vote seems to be about everything BUT baseball."
With the "Character Issues" and politics I completely agree. There are plenty of A-holes in the HOF and being a jerk should not take away from what you did on the field.
The steroid cloud on the other hand IS about baseball - Regardless what you think, steroids did enhance what they did on the field - It is cheating. And therefore Clemens, Bonds and the rest can rot outside the hall.
But what about everyone who used and abused amphetamines over the years, which also enhanced what they did on the field?
I'm not sure that amphetamines and human growth hormone are quite the same thing, lol.
You're right; amphetamines likely had a bigger impact on the game, when you consider what the aging curve looks like now compared to the era when greenies were widely taken. I mean, Willie Mays himself said it was like the game was moving in slow motion when he took amphetamines.
Excellent point, Tony. People look in judgment on Bonds' late career dinger surge, but no one talks about Henry Aaron's. Hammerin' Hank hit more homers in the first 7 seasons after his age 27 season than he did in his first 7 seasons. He admitted to taking greenies, an illegal substance. Today, he would've been banned.
Did the greenies help him? He certainly thought it did. Do you think sportswriters would've voted him in into the Hall if they knew he took them?
If you want to use Aaron's own admission on amphetamines, you need to complete the quote. He says he used them once, didn't like how they made him feel (totally believable on a personal level, because I used them once & quit for the same reason), and never used them again. So, keep these discussions in context. There are others, I"m sure, that you can use for your amphetamine poster child. I can also say, again from experience, amphetamines are pretty overrated because of the negative effects that come with them. I find it hard to believe that they actually helped anyone long term. Maybe here and there when they were having a tough night on the road. But long term, I think they'd tear pretty much everyone apart.
He also went from playing half his games in a pitcher's park to a bigtime hitter's part when his team moved to Atlanta. I vaguely recall seeing analysis from Bill James showing that's why his home run patterns looked the way they did.
Yeah, there are a lot of factors that go into a hitter's power. People thinking big numbers are due to steroids or other PED alone are naive.
Yes, good call, because there are no other cheaters in the Hall of Fame.
Love this logic. You're probably the same person who says "everyone else is speeding and driving like a maniac - so I will too."
Predictably, you missed the point. You said those guys shouldn't get it because they're cheaters. What do you say about the other cheaters already in? Isn't that a double standard? And don't go with, "writers probably didn't know they were cheaters." For one example, John McGraw was one of the biggest cheaters when he played w/ the Baltimore Orioles in the 1890s and it was well documented. He was adhering to the gamesmanship adage that many people hold, "if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough."
I'm not condoning it, I'm just recognizing the reality that's a little more complicated than your simple morality of "cheating." Why is one form of cheating acceptable and another is not?
John McGraw is a bad example since he was inducted as a manager, not as a player.
"Clemens, Bonds and the rest can rot outside the hall"
Sure is gonna make for a damn smelly experience as you wait outside the entrance.
We all know why Shaughnessy submitted a Kent only ballot. It was so everyone would discuss why Shaughnessy submitted a Kent ballot. That’s the worst kind of voter and writer.
Precisely this. What does he do for an encore performance next year? I think the Kent only ballot went under the radar last year so he got the needed attention this year. A Vizquel only ballot next year seems like the logical next step.