Should Broadcasters and Online Writers Be Allowed To Vote For Hall of Fame?

[lleeder]

what ya got?

[HBox]

As long as whoever we are considering to allow to vote isn't already voting it will be a substantial improvement.

[El Mudo]

I kinda agree with Charles Pierce that they shouldn't. (http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/pierce/2010/01/just_shut_up_now_please.html)

Let's start with the basics. Journalists have no business -- absolutely none -- deciding who should or should not be included in what is essentially a promotional scheme for the institution they cover. This has very little to do with competence, and much more to do with professional ethics. Baseball writers should no more be deciding on who should be in the HOF than some Pentagon correspondents ought to be awarding the Silver Star. The answer to the obvious question of who should vote is: I could care less. (If I hadn't lost my golden BBWAA ticket in 1989, two years short of eligibility, I planned to have my bartender cast my first ballot.) My own preference would be to have one Big Baseball Person decide every year, the way certain annual compilation volumes have guest editors.

And that's not even to mention the horrible effect that voting for this thing has on many of the electors. My lord, people. This is a museum. It is for old things. It is for dead people. It is not a vehicle through which you can settle grudges, elevate enthusiasms, or remain 12-years old forever. What happened to Buck O'Neil was a disgrace, and what's happening to Marvin Miller now is an offense against history, which I take much more seriously than I do baseball.


It really is a crime too that Marvin Miller hasn't been enshrined yet.