Colin Cowherd weighs in on Hall of Fame ridiculousness

by on Jan 10, 2013 10:43 pm in New York Mets

For those New York Mets fans that think it’s an absolute travesty that Mike Piazza didn’t get elected into the Hall of Fame yesterday, save your rage.  Hall of Fame voting has always been somewhat of a joke and this year the joke just went a little farther than usual.  Colin Cowherd of ESPN Radio did a great job of putting things into perspective during the first 5 minutes of ‘The Herd’ this morning and I thought it was worth sharing.  To listen to the complete audio clip just click here, but here’s my favorite excerpt and something that should help people realize what type of ridiculous decisions the BBWAA have been making over the years.

Some of you fans are weird.  Why would any of you be outraged?  Why should any club feel obligated to put new members in.  Clubs are always more exclusive with fewer members, not more.  This year nobody got in.  Now we know Bonds, Clemens and Piazza are all Hall of Famers but you have the steroid/HGH dilemma so they’ll  wait a while.

But once again my biggest voting problem with the HOF isn’t who they left out.  Isn’t even who they let in.  The charade of HOF voting is that nobody has ever received a 100% first ballot induction.  Babe Ruth didn’t get it, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays.  Somebody literally with all three said, ‘Willie Mays hall of famer….that’s ludicrous.’

Photo by Michael G. Baron

Folks Tom Seaver had 2.80 ERA, 300 wins, 3,600 strikeouts, 4,700 innings, a 12-time All-Star, three Cy Youngs , Rookie of the Year and a World Series champ.  Five voters first ballot said ‘Nah, I don’t see it.’  Reggie Jackson once said of Tom Seaver, blind people came to the park just to listen to Seaver pitch.

Johnny Bench, 10 guys left him off his first ballot.  He played for 15 years, he was an All –Star for 14 .  He won 10 gold gloves, was the MVP of the National League twice, the World Series once, rookie of the year.  Somebody, 10 guys said, “Nah….I don’t see it, I’m waiting for Manny Sanguillen or Steve Yeager to come up”

You know what the sad thing is, and if you’ve got a Twitter account or you do a radio show, there’s always those trolls, those losers on message boards who are just there to get people worked up.  They’re losers, they’re miserable.  The sad thing, we have voters voting for Hall of Fames who are those same trolls.”

It’s easy to ignore trolls on social media because their intentions are obvious.  The same typically can’t be said of a sportswriter, but after seeing some of these Hall of Fame ballots, I’m not sure there’s any other explanation.  They can continue to fish for reactions but may be surprised how they’re viewed by the public when the fish stop biting.

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  • j met

    I’m really tired of people using the “Joe DiMaggio didn’t get in on the 1st ballot.” BS.
    There was a reason why he didn’t was there was a backlog of players to vote for. The Hall of Fame was started in 1936 and they were voting for guys who retired 30 years earlier. Then they didn’t vote every year in the 1940′s. There was a huge backlog of players and they wanted to get playersz like AlSimmons in while Al was still alive. Can someone actually acknoweldge that?
    There is no reason why a Writer shouldn’t vote for a player on the 1st ballot other then to wait and see on suspicions they did something and they would like to learn more. To have writers not vote for a player like Seaver or Maddux or Randy Johnson on the first ballot is a joke.