The Baseball Writers Association of America is an antiquated little organization that once played a legitimate role in electing the members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. After all, there was a time when the members of the BBWAA attended all or most of the games, even the post-season, and truly had an impact on the day-to-day operation of Major League Baseball.
Today, however, this traditional old boys club, is just another relic from the past. Because their employers’ don’t have the ready cash they once did, very few newspapers even bother to cover the post-season anymore. There are many members of the BBWAA who see fewer games, live in a season, than I do.
On Wednesday of this week, the BBWAA proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that just like newspapers, the time has come to put this obsolete, snot-nosed old boys club to rest. It’s time to create a committee of baseball people to decide who gets into the Hall of Fame.
Baseball writers can’t do it anymore. They were important once, but it’s reached the point that this gigantic collection of booze-swilling non-athletes, old men who can’t even read statistics, let alone understand what they’re watching, has to be relieved of their Hall of Fame duties.
Now I have no problem with Andre Dawson being inducted into the Hall of Fame, but if a lifetime .279 hitter (9,927 ABs) with 438 homers, 1373 runs, 1,591 RBI, 314 stolen bases, 503 doubles and no championships gets into the Hall, then it’s time to open the doors to everybody. This is a guy who never played in a World Series. I mean, how do you possibly induct Andre Dawson into the Hall and NOT Roberto Alomar? That’s just insane.
Of course, the idiots of the BBWAA already proved their shocking group insanity when they elected light-hitting Ozzie Smith to the Hall. Smith did backflips and turned some routine plays into highlight-reel spectaculars, but he had a pea-shooter for a bat. Sure, he could flash the leather, but he was a marginal hitter.
In 19 seasons, Smith hit .262 (9396 ABs) with with 28 home runs (28??? That’s not a Hall of Fame number, even for a middle infielder), 1257 runs, 793 RBI, 580 stolen bases, 402 doubles and won one World Series championship. He had a lifetime fielding percentage of .978. With 1,072 walks, Smith had a lifetime on-base percentage of .337.
Meanwhile, as these mindless knobs proved yesterday, they don’t even look at careers or statistics when they cast their ballots.
Once again, Detroit Tigers legend Alan Trammell was kept out of the Hall. In fact, Trammell received only 121 votes. These BBWAA people are an embarrassment to humanity, not just baseball. Bad enough that they enabled Mark McGwire and now hate him because they knew he was fooling with steroids, but didn’t have the guts to write anything about it when he was saving baseball in 1998, now they ignore Trammell’s class and numbers while voting for people who couldn’t carry the former Tigers’ shortstop’s cleats to the park.
Trammell hit .285 (better than Dawson) in 20 major league seasons, all with the same team. He had 8,388 at bats, 2,365 hits, 1,231 runs, 412 doubles, 185 homers, 1,003 RBI and 236 stolen bases. He had seven seasons in which he hit .300 or better. His on-base percentage was .352 (better than Smith). He won four gold gloves, three silver sluggers and was an all-star six times. In 1984, he was the World Series MVP as the Tigers won their only title in 41 years.
He also has exactly the same lifetime fielding percentage as Ozzie Smith.
He has generally better numbers than Hall of Fame infielder Red Schoendienst and has considerably better numbers, over a longer career, than Hall of Fame shortstop Phil Rizzuto (both, by the way, deserve to be in the Hall).
And while we’re at it, Barry Larkin had a nice career, but not 157 votes better than Alan Trammell’s career. The voting is a freakin’ joke. These people are messed up.
The only way baseball can fix the idiocy that’s been created by the BBWAA is to end the association’s hold on the Hall. These guys are as dead as the industry in which they work and it’s time to get them away from baseball’s greatest shrine.