Posted on 01/08/2014 12:40:06 PM PST by EveningStar
Former Atlanta Braves star pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine and retired superstar slugger Frank Thomas were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in voting announced on Wednesday.
With 75 percent support from 571 votes cast by a media panel needed to ensure enshrinement, Maddux received 97.2 percent while Glavine had 91.9 percent backing and Thomas was supported by 83.7 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.yahoo.com ...
If one could list 20 candidates in one’s ballot, I would have used up all 20 spots—that’s how loaded the ballot is right now.
Limiting it to 10, I would have voted for Maddux, Thomas, Piazza, Bagwell, Biggio, McGriff, Trammell, Raines, Palmeiro and Morris.
I think they’ll increase the number of candidates one may vote for to 15 next year. The 10-man limit cost the election of at least one player this year (Biggio) and certainly caused Palmeiro to be kicked off the ballot.
Who are the other 10 if you had no limit?
Would you put Clemens and Bonds in there?
Bonds, Clemens, Glavine, Mussina, Schilling, Lee Smith, McGwire, Sosa, Edgar Martinez and Larry Walker. I’d leave Kent and Mattingly (and Luis Gonzalez, Kenny Rogers and Moises Alou) off.
There probably are 10 additional guys I’d vote for had they not been stupidly held below 5% within the past 15 years. Let’s see, Whitaker, Hershiser, Cone, John Franco, Albert Belle, Bernie Williams ... OK, maybe not 10.
Most people here would probably disagree but I’d but the roids people in as well. It seems silly not to have Bonds are Clemens in there. (Not to mention Pete Rose)
Bonds was or was at least close to a HOFer before he started juicing. And wasn’t Hank Aaron popping amphetamines? Old Babe Ruth wasn’t on taking anything but booze.
What’s your opinion of that guy that gave his HOF vote to deadspin? They stripped him of his vote a couple days later.
Prior to 1999 (when Bonds’s detractors claim that Bonds started juicing, Barry Bonds already was the greatest LF of all time, ahead of Musial and Williams. He already was a slam-dunk HOFer
I think that too many writers take their responsibility too cavalierly, and that letting a website vote for you has to be punished. But a lifetime ban seems too much for a serious writer who did it as a protest against the voting process.
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