Here's the thing about "officials". A term, which for today's purposes, encompasses referees, officials, and those Teds that vote for the MLB Hall of Fame. So here's the thing about those Teds. They're tasked with making a call. Again, whether it's an MLB umpire, a basketball referee, or in this case a voter for a Hall of Fame. The
second you give them any room to editorialize on that call? You're in trouble. And since the MLB Hall of Fame voting is completely comprised of guys who editorialize for a living, this latest shutout can't come as much of a surprise...
I bring it all back to the charging call in basketball. So many referees get it wrong and call too many charges, in my opinion mostly because the physical call is that much more fun and impressive to make. So they make the call when they shouldn't, merely to draw attention to themselves and remind people of how important they are. But that's the thing. They're
not important. OK, they're important. But they aren't a millionth as important as they'd like to believe...
So, yeah. Votes like the one earlier this week, and the one a few years back that left out Robbie Alomar, are to be expected. Because when you give attention seeking whores a chance to seek even more attention, they're always going to take it. You think this vote was really about "The Steroid Era"? Nah. It was about everyone that wanted to giving themselves a platform to tell you how they
feel about The Steroid Era. And it's as simple as that. Why else would they hold their votes hostage by giving the voter the option to make their picks public, instead of making it mandatory that all ballots are made public?
Maybe it's this new age where so many media members have become semi celebrities that's doing this, I don't know. But the fact remains. The voters have officially made the voting process more about themselves than the players they're entrusted to judge. And for that, the Hall of Fame might just be tarnished forever. Not to say that it was super clean before, but it's quickly gone from having a minor amphetamine problem to a full blown epidemic of anabolic steroids and HGH...
And I don't have a solution, for you. Much like my feelings on gun control, I think we've let things go on one way for too long to reasonably expect the necessary changes to take place. You can't overhaul the system, because it's steeped in tradition. And with baseball being the only sport where the fans actually give a rats ass about tradition, that would be a problem. So, what do you do? You just sit back and laugh. Because that's what you do when someone tells a funny joke. And the voting process for the MLB Hall of Fame has become exactly that. A funny joke. Or even better. A funny
racist joke. Because you're still laughin', even though part of you knows that it's just not cool...
But enough about baseball. That sport doesn't offer nearly as entertaining a fantasy sports platform, and almost never provides enticing lines on which we can wager. So screw them and their holier than thou writers. Oh, and for the record. My HOF ballot would have had 4 names on it: Craig Biggio, Jack Morris, Don Mattingly & Edgar Martinez. I don't vote for cheaters, because they cheat. And I don't need a Federal court to tell me who's guilty...
Now, football...
