Baseball Hall of Fame 2020

[Ceetar]

if there's any reason to keep Bonds out, you HAVE to keep Schilling out for being a racist asshole. He doesn't deserve a stage or any honor in anyway. If you're going to throw out the character clause (as you should) then there's no reason to keep probably the second best (hi Trout) baseball player any of us have ever seen out.



flat out, the hall is meaningless and just an arbitrary set of writers bloviating if it doesn't include him.

[metsmarathon]

to my knowledge, there are no allegations against schilling for being a user. maybe i'm wrong, or misremember.



assholes and racists have always been allowed into the hall. the voters have sometimes not liked voting for them, but being an asshole is not the reason that bonds is getting blockaded.



the character clause being invoked is a new thing in the steroid age. show me the actual historical precedent.

[Edgy MD]

Dick/Richie Allen spent 14 years on the ballot getting between 3.7 and 18.9% of the vote. Many consider him to be statistically as good as anybody on the outside looking in.



Apparently he's expressed a lot of regret in his post-playing days, leading to the weird turnaround where a lot of former teammates and coaches say, "He's not so bad, a lot of that is overblown," and Richie saying, "I was huge asshole."



I'm not sure there has to be precedent, though. It's part of the explicit standard. To the extent that folks have taken the clause seriously, I imagine it's rarely been a difference-maker, but there are probably more cases of borderline guys whose widely admired character helped put them over the top than cases of borderline guys whose widely criticized character helped keep them out.

[Benjamin Grimm]

It's certainly not because of a lack of talent that Shoeless Joe Jackson and Peter Edward Rose are not in the Hall of Fame.



The statistics of Pete Rose and Barry Bonds etc. are not being expunged. Their accomplishments are part of the permanent historical record, as they should be. But Shame negates Fame, and those who have tarnished the game, as Bonds and Clemens etc. have done, don't deserve to be honored.



Frankly, I'd rather see Rose in the Hall than Bonds (not that I'm saying Rose should be in) because Bonds did more harm to the game. Rose's all-time base hit record is legitimate. Bonds' home run record is a travesty.

[Edgy MD]

Good use of "Travesty."

[Ceetar]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Frankly, I'd rather see Rose in the Hall than Bonds (not that I'm saying Rose should be in) because Bonds did more harm to the game. Rose's all-time base hit record is legitimate. Bonds' home run record is a travesty.

False. Bonds was GREAT for the game, was fun to watch. DOMINATED. What a great player.



oh im' sorry, is the hall not about baseball? I'm confused.



but i reterate, fuck the hall and the BBWAA. Meaningless and arbitrary. Bonds is an all time great and we can just use 'all time great' instead of 'Hall of FAme' the first is more meaningful.

[Edgy MD]

How can it be bullshit to state a preference?



—Rob Gordon

[Benjamin Grimm]

I disagree. Bonds was not great for the game. He was an absolute disgrace.

[Frayed Knot]

Plus the HoF is neither meaningless nor arbitrary, and it certainly doesn't simply become so by one not agreeing with some of the choices made (for entry or for not).

[nymr83]

to my knowledge, there are no allegations against schilling for being a user. maybe i'm wrong, or misremember. assholes and racists have always been allowed into the hall. the voters have sometimes not liked voting for them, but being an asshole is not the reason that bonds is getting blockaded. the character clause being invoked is a new thing in the steroid age. show me the actual historical precedent.

But Bonds was an asshole to the wrong people - THE MEDIA!



He was always nice to the fans. But the fans don't write the articles everyone reads about Bonds



"Steroids" are the ONLY reason to keep him out. Lumping him in with Clemens for the way he treated people is just wrong.

[Ceetar]

well, there are credible domestic violence claims in Bonds history, but it's not like the media cares about that either.

based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

It's literally what the Hall of Fame is. Maybe it's not _completely_ meaningless, but the BBWAA now accounts for a tiny percentage of what passes for 'baseball entertainment' whereas 80 years ago they were probably much everything that wasn't the game itself. For me, it's meaningless. Sort of like anything that comes from Joel Sherman. It contributes zero value to my baseball experience, and sometimes negative value. I have no problem referring to Barry Bonds as 'inner circle' or 'all time great' or 'hall of famer' if I was writing about him. It's a superlative, and it's accurate.

[nymr83]

well, there are credible domestic violence claims in Bonds history, but it's not like the media cares about that either.

I didn't even know about that!



But yeah, they care more that he wouldn't sit down with them for an interview than they do if he beat a woman.

[Guest 41Forever]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Frankly, I'd rather see Rose in the Hall than Bonds (not that I'm saying Rose should be in) because Bonds did more harm to the game. Rose's all-time base hit record is legitimate. Bonds' home run record is a travesty. False. Bonds was GREAT for the game, was fun to watch. DOMINATED. What a great player.

I disagree with this. One of the game's most hallowed records -- if not the most hallowed -- has been rendered meaningless and possibly out of reach because of a guy juicing. That's bad for the game, even if it gave everyone a common villain to boo for a while.



I disagree with a lot of the stupid stuff Schilling has posted on social media after retiring, but I don't think that has any impact on what he did while playing.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

As I've said before we can;t get too caught up in "counting" stats, especially as we don't truly understand how widespread juicing was in his era (for example how many pitchers used? How many juicy minor leaguers were coming for their jobs? Why do we assume only those who were caught were users?) and it can be argued that as ethically dubious as it was it wasn't technically illegal at least for a time. So I just mentally adjust for the era. 73 was 61 in the steroid era. 15 was 61 in the dead-ball era, etc etc. The number itself doesn't make a guy any more or less suspect. How do we know Schilling wasn't also a juicer? Because he says he didn;t?

[MFS62]

well, there are credible domestic violence claims in Bonds history, but it's not like the media cares about that either. I didn't even know about that!

I started a thread about it on the old board with the title "She Called Him Jeff Kent During Sex".

Later

Edited April 30, 2020 by Guest

[Ceetar]

Hell the ball was adding dozens of feet to every fly ball last year. Fact. We have no idea the baseball result of what Bonds took, especially if you don't know the result of the stuff the pitchers took.



And hell, Jeter nearly got in unanimously, and the evidence for him was more damning than Piazza.

[metsmarathon]

there was evidence against jeter...?

[Ceetar]

more than Piazza, yes.

[metsmarathon]

and that evidence was...?

[MFS62]

=metsmarathon post_id=36238 time=1588347336 user_id=83]
and that evidence was...?

[Ceetar]

practically every single person he played with used, openly, in the same clubhouse no? but Mr. "whatever it takes" never even tried pre-banned Andro? sure.



It a safer bet that anyone that played pre..i dunno, 2004? is more likely to have used than not. Certainly if keeping a 'clean' (ha) Hall is important, you have to keep guys like this out.

[metsmarathon]

so, your evidence is that he existed? ok. sure. good enough for me.

[Ceetar]

he's also been linked to various trainers with PED ties over the years.



This is aside from the obvious arbitrary line about what's an acceptable drug/steroid and what's not. Cortisone, toradol, others.



Never mind amphetamines.



And he's getting so much credit for championships, for counting stats, all of which are enormously inflated by confirmed steroid use.

[nymr83]

I'm all for attacking Jeter, but he seems no more or less guilty of steroid use than the average player who played in that time period. Are we keeping 1995-2004 out of the hall?

[Ceetar]

some voters are, yes. Except for Jeter who is purer than the whitest snow (spoiler alert: that's the cocaine).

[metsmarathon]

=Ceetar post_id=36242 time=1588349532 user_id=102]This is aside from the obvious arbitrary line about what's an acceptable drug/steroid and what's not. Cortisone, toradol, others.

[Ceetar]

It's absolutely not preposterous. It's actually more preposterous that drugs that help your body recover and heal faster are banned, but ones that let you mask pain to dangerous levels are okay. Drugs that enhance your workout are banned. 91 exemptions for amphetamine-laden ADHD treatments were issued though. I'm sure some, maybe even many, are legitimate, but I can't imagine it's hard for an athlete to find a doctor willing to diagnose that either.



MLB, and all sports really, are abusing drugs under the guise of competing and getting players back out there, and it's hard to think the way some of these things are used is safer than a regimented workout program that includes a banned steroid.

[metsmarathon]

all sports abuse the body at risk of future long-term damage for short term gains.



while i don't entirely disagree with the underlying premise, there is a clear difference between working within the framework provided, with medically acceptable and legal treatments, and with those that are not.



if everything was legal, i suppose there would be no problem. if nothing was legal, i guess there would be no problem either, maybe. when some things are legal and others are not, you get punished for doing the illegal things. if everything legal is really so bad, and so advantageous, then there would be no reason to take the illegal stuff, would there? if you take the illegal stuff, no matter how similar you may think it is to the legal stuff, no matter how much worse you thing the legal stuff is, you can yell all you want that it shouldn't be against the law, but you do not have the ability to claim that you broke no law.

[Ceetar]

I mean, we're talking an arbitrary classification of baseball players in a wing of a building. 'laws' are whatever we make them.



also Bonds never failed a test.



neither did Piazza but he had to wait too.

[Edgy MD]

Of course Bonds failed a test. He failed several.



If you want to throw them out or question their viabilitiy or credibility, that's up to you. But this isn't a court of law here.