Sunday, January 17, 2010

Baseball Hall of Fame Voting is a Joke


I'm not a fan of Halls of Fame (or is it "Hall of Fames"?). It is voted on by people who, mostly, never actually played the game. For some ungodly reason, there is a morals hurdle that voters seem to want to place on the nominees. And the voting makes no sense.

It's a bit of old news that Andre Dawson finally got enough votes to get into the Hall. Apparently 2010 was when he was worthy of making it because he wasn't close his first eight years on the ballot. I guess this extra year of not adding anything to his career made a difference.

That's the old argument. Either you are a Hall of Famer or you are not. We've heard all this before (note: read this article about how it took Joe DiMaggio three years on the ballot before he got into the Hall).

Here is my problem: David Segui got a vote.

Yes, someone who is given a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame decided that David Segui should be in. What? And Ray Allen thinks the fans get All-Star voting wrong. This is David Segui who had a career .291 batting average, 139 home runs and 684 RBIs (or is it RsBI?) in 15 seasons. Segui played for the Orioles, Mets, Expos, Mariners, Blue Jays, Rangers, Indians and the Orioles again. He also admitted to using steroids and HGH.

Even diehard baseball fans probably haven't thought of Segui for years until reading this. Yet one voter honestly believes that he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Roger Maris, Pete Rose, Mark McGwire and Joe Jackson are out ... but Segui can be in?

That's ridiculous and that voter should have his "voting honor" taken away immediately. These Hall voters are the first one to tell you how high and mighty they are and how big of a responsibility it is to have a vote. They are first to tell you that fans have no idea what a Hall of Famer really is. Yet, David Segui.

Segui hit more than 20 home runs in a season ... once. He drove in more than 100 RBIs ... once. He played more than 150 games in a season just three times. He is not a Hall of Famer by any way of looking at it. Well, there is one way that gets him in -- whomever voted for him.

If you read the linked article above, you'll see that only half of the voters voted for DiMaggio on his first ballot. Even two years later when he was finally voted in, there were over 11% of voters that felt he still shouldn't be in. So you have voters who believe that DiMaggio wasn't a Hall of Famer and one guy who thinks Segui is??? You've got to be kidding me!

Heck, on this last ballot, two people felt Ellis Burks was a Hall of Famer. Two people voted for Eric Karros. Kevin Appier and Pat Hentgen each got a vote. Yet five-percent of voters didn't think Babe Ruth deserved to go into the Hall when he was elected.

It is moronic. So the next time you hear or read that someone has a Baseball Hall of Fame vote, you might be encountering the biggest moron (or hypocrite) in the world.

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