Words on the Internet that will surely effect social change
The Hall of Fame results will be released today at 11 AM, and we will wail and gnash our teeth and rend our garments and then (SPOILER!) Barry Bonds won't get close to Cooperstown. And I'm not saying this as a Giants fan who wants to mail a jar of black licorice to everyone who doesn't vote for him, but rather as a baseball fan who would like the Hall to remain an institution worth caring about: Every vote should be public.
You might think that there should be a secret ballot for the same reasons that we have a secret ballot in elections for political office. What if those poor sportswriters get persecuted for believing that Jack Morris was put on Earth by L Ron Hubbard himself to smite all those darned pitcher-win atheists? Well, then they'd deserve it. The people who have power should always be accountable to the people who don't, or else they will turn themselves into an insular, out-of-touch group whose peccadilloes and biases control processes in ways that no sane person would approve of. Sure hope that doesn't happen!
This is not to say that a writer who doesn't vote for Randy Johnson or throws a pity vote to Eddie Guardado should automatically lose his vote. But he or she should have to justify it. The Hall of Fame is the highest honor in baseball, and to vote for it is a privilege. Like any privilege, it can be abused. Not to get too radical here, but people who regularly abuse a privilege probably shouldn't have it anymore. I know, I know, I'm getting very Lennon here. You may say I'm a dreamer . . .
Here's my proposal for how it would work: when a writer submits a vote, the writer also submits a sentence (Or more, for example a column in some public medium) about every player worth considering on the ballot. So if you voted for Brian Giles but not Gary Sheffield you could say for Giles "Underrated and consistent all-around player" or "Compares well to Sam Rice and Ben Chapman" or "I'm Dave Winfield and Go Padres!" Then you could say for Sheffield "Not great enough for long enough" or "Bad clubhouse presence" or "Ballot's too overstuffed this year" and then you could look like an idiot because you voted for Brian Giles over Gary Sheffield and what the hell is wrong with you, Hypothetical Person? That was dumb.
These sentences and the voting record go on the BBWAA website to be preserved forever, and if anyone for whom you didn't write a sentence gets into the Hall at any point, you lose your vote. Simple! And well deserved.
Now, would this fix all the problems in HoF voting? Ahahahaha . . . no. But it's not designed to. The purpose here is to ensure that every voter puts at least the tiniest bit of thought and effort into filling out a ballot, and the public understands why people don't get in. If Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell fall short again, I want 200 writers to publicly admit it was because of vague steroid rumors. When 20 guys don't vote for Pedro Martinez, I want them to say it's because they're upholding the tradition of a group that took nine ballots to put Hank Greenberg in. When A..J. Pierzynski is on the ballot, I want the majority of writers to not even feel the need to write a sentence about him before he's off forever. I have a dream, you guys. I have a dream.
Would this make the voting better? Maybe a little. But would it make it more transparent, letting people know what kind of institution the Hall really is? Absolutely. And that's certainly worth doing.