Baseball Hall of Fame is a joke

Sometimes the hardest part of this job is the fact that I have to be the one to stand up and state the obvious within a situation – even if doing so may offend or upset a large group of people.

Right now is one of those times, so here goes: the Baseball Hall of Fame is a joke.

A sham.

A con.

A poorly run, mismanaged club lacking its luster.

It’s voted on by weasels (more on that later), and it’s hypocritical in its criteria.

It votes in very good players like Craig Biggio, but it leaves out truly great players like Pete Rose, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Nothing against Biggio, but he’s a career .280 hitter who only got 3,000 hits because he played for 20 years. Yes, longevity counts for something, but 3,000 hits over 20 years is just 150 hits a season. This past MLB season, 33 players collected 150 hits.

Like I said above – he’s a very good player, but not great. But now, he’s in the Hall and the above-mentioned guys are not.

So why is it like this? Why do they hold grudges against so many and keep worthwhile nominees out of Cooperstown?

For Rose, it’s because he bet on the sport as a manager. But what does that have to do with his ability on the field? Last I checked, he was on the ballot as a player and not a manager, right?

Is he a bad person? Maybe so. But so was Ty Cobb. Google it if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

To keep a guy with 4,256 hits and a career .303 average out of the Hall is a disgrace and an indictment on the entire process – no matter what or who he may have placed money on as a manager.

Now, let’s talk about the steroids, guys.

They say Barry Bonds used steroids. OK. Fair point. A man with a blimp-sized head probably did use performance-enhancing hormones. But how many home runs did he hit off of pitchers who were juicing, too?

Does the Hall of Fame know that? Even if it did, would it matter?

Does the Hall also know exactly how many of Bonds’ homers were strictly because of the juice? Was it just the ones that cleared the fence by 2-3 feet – that extra umph created by the drugs? The problem is we don’t know, and the facts are that Bonds would have been a great player in any era – drugs or not.

Until we can police every single player who did or didn’t cheat throughout the 1990s, we need to let ALL of the worthy Steroid Era players into the Hall. Give them an asterisk, but let them in.

Just call the entire era poisoned, give them their own wing and call it a day. We can’t just pretend like the most exciting era in the history of the sport never happened.

And we certainly can’t have a home in the baseball sanctuary for Craig Biggio, but not for Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Again, nothing against Craig Biggio, but the facts are the facts.

But away from the nitpicking of who is and who isn’t a Hall of Fame player, I’d also like to publicly call out another aspect of the process – the voters.

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America is the body cast with the responsibility of deciding each year who is or isn’t in the Hall.

A total of 549 guys have votes, and candidates need 412 votes (75 percent) to make it to Cooperstown.

OK, that sounds fair and reasonable.

But what isn’t fair or reasonable is why some people involved have a vote at all.

This so-called Baseball Writers’ Association of America has never made anyone a unanimous entrant into the Hall, which obviously means that several of its members are idiots.

Tom Seaver is the highest vote-getter to date, earning 98.84 percent of the ballot in 1992, earning 425 of the 430 ballots cast. How can five reasonable human beings with eyes and ears not think Tom Seaver should be in the Hall?

Know other players who also were not unanimous Hall of Famers? How about Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken, Hank Aaron, Greg Maddux, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle?

I’m sorry, but if you’re currently a member of the BBWAA and you didn’t vote Greg Maddux into the Hall of Fame last year, then you need a brain examination.

The same can be said for the 11 voters who left Babe Ruth off their ballot in 1936. Or the nine voters who opted against Hank Aaron in 1982.

Last year, ESPN’s Dan Le Batard sold his vote.

This year, a Cleveland-based voter left Pedro Martinez off his ballot because he routinely beat the Cleveland Indians. Say what?

Isn’t winning games a sign that one should be in the Hall?

I’m sorry, but the process is broken and we need to completely revamp and redo the entire process – starting with who is eligible to get in and ending with who is doing the voting in the first place.

But, of course, this entire column ultimately will prove to be a waste of time and newspaper space because of the overlying elephant in the room, which is that baseball is a stale business run by stale people who are unwilling to change.

Baseball has been on life support for years now – this is nothing new. It’s the sport that knows its ratings are down, but will look at you in the eye and tell you that you’re wrong.

It’s the only sport in the world that can get 100 percent of its calls right with an instant replay system, but yet is the only one resisting the change.

It’s a sport enslaved by arbitrary numbers and markings like 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 wins and other things that are far too concrete and inflexible.

But those are other arguments for other days – this spewing is meant to be solely about the Hall and its shortcomings.

So congratulations to John Smoltz, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Craig Biggio. If I had a ballot, three of those four would have been in my Hall, as well.

But so would have Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Pete Rose.

You get the picture.

That they’re not there is as we stated above – a joke, a con and a sham.