The Ghosts in the Hall

No new names in "the Hall"; not sure how I feel about this. In one sense; my "formative years" in professional ball were tainted with the stench of PED's from McGwire, to Sosa, to Bonds, to any other player we haven't identified, on the other hand they did still "happen".

Baseball to me is much more than numbers, more than a collection of stats, it's about the team, the drive, the "name on the front." I want my hall to reflect that but how do we do that? How do the writers do that? I don't know.

I do know that I will remember sitting in "bottlecap" Busch stadium, cowering behind my glove 425+ feet away from home plate trying to nab a "Big Mac" batting practice ball that was crushed into the seats. I will remember Lee Smith beginning the tradition of the cardiac cards in the closer slot. I will remember the "killer B's" and their pesky ways of getting into the "bonnet" of the Cards and always getting that timely hit. I will remember a "bloody sock", McGriff the "crime dog", the '98 home run chase, the nastiness of Clemens, Walker's final pushes with the 'birds, getting flipped off by Ricky Henderson because my choir mates wanted to see Kenny Lofton in center field and not him and "the greatest baseball player ever" - Reggie Sanders.

As much as the stuffy old men who vote for the hall of fame want the PED era to go away, it won't As Jason Stark, more eloquently than I put it;

"If there's anything we've learned from the 2013 Hall of Fame election, it's that what we're doing now isn't working. You'd never know it from the balloting, but the '90s happened.

Now it's up to all of us to figure out what the Hall of Fame ought to do about it."
 

I applaud the new efforts to clean up the game but we have to figure out what to do about the past when everyone was turning a blind eye in favor of the spectacle of the sport.

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Writers who put this better than I;

Jason Stark: Let's Face it the Hall of Fame is a Mess; http://espn.go.com/mlb/hof13/story/_/id/8826383/what-mlb-hall-fame-be

David Schoenfield: Hall of Fame Voting Hits a New Low; http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/31986/hall-of-fame-voting-hits-a-new-low

ESPN's Hall of Fame Ballot; http://espn.go.com/mlb/hof13/story/_/id/8824295/mlb-craig-biggio-elected-espn-2013-baseball-hall-fame-ballot

Barry Bloom: Biggio tops vote but no one elected to Hall; http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130108&content_id=40884098&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

Peter Gammons: Hall Vote About What we Know and What We Don't Know; http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121230&content_id=40809554&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb