Serious baseball question. How can we, as baseball fans, make our voices heard when it comes to.?
the hall of fame voting? I realize this is a very complex subject but it does seem that many of us who follow baseball closely and have researched the game, understand that there are serious problems with the way players are selected. Clearly there are players who belong in the hall yet because of cheap back door politics and hard feelings, these outstanding players will not get their just due. Is there any possible way that we, the fans, can make ourselves heard? For that matter, will anyone listen?
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i think maybe we can get a petition to make it so the people can vote for the people sort of like the way people vote for the all star game.
Yea, I agree with you that there are players that should be in but aren’t (Pete Rose). Also, I don’t think many ppl if any will listen to us cause most fans are bias towards their favorite team and if there is 1 player on that team that has a slight chance on making hof but rly shouldn’t they will still say he deserves to be in it.
Let the fans decide and forever after you get only Yankees and Red Sox inducted. ick
There’s already a completely ridiculous All-Star roster every year, so I think the fans decide plenty.
I think we have to accept that people are imperfect so every kind of voting/balloting will have flaws.
It’s unfortunate, I agree.
I believe they should be inducted into Hall of Fame on the basis of the players good records and stats, if they are found doing something bad, then they should be held accountable for their actions and don’t you ever feel sorry for them because they broke the law to better themselves to get to the Hall of Fame!!!!!!
I deserve a thumbs up for my answer!!!!!
letters to the writers.
Letter writing campaigns.
Blogosphere noise (in a good way).
Being and staying polite.
I really mean this one: abandoning those approaches which are well-established as Not Helping The Cause. If you’re stumping for one particular candidate and your talking points have been, since forever, dying on the vine, it eventually becomes time to abandon that tack and try something else. And I will cite an example: Jack Morris. Now, I don’t support Morris for the Hall anyway, but his ballot returns have been largely stagnant for years, so clearly — pay attention, Tiger fans — the typical campaign tactics have not been working. That favorite talking point, Most Wins In The 1980s, Just. Is. Not. Getting. Him. There. It is a near-meaningless achievement, a quirk of fortunate timing, and it is getting in the way of REAL appreciation of his career. So dump it already, please.
Promote candidates based upon what they DID do, not (a) what they might have done or (b) what other HOFers did. In particular, avoid comparisons to other weak honorees, because expounding on past mistakes and trying to use them to sanction new ones does nothing to improve execution of the Hall’s mission.
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That stated, I don’t think the Hall’s voting methodologies are particularly bad, nor do I think there are undercurrents of political pressure in the process, at least not in the BBWAA electorate, because it simply is too large, and there are clear minds that cut through life’s nonsense among them, many. There are, however, a number of senior voters who grew up with, and stuck with, RBI and pitcher’s wins and such stats, which might look good but are poor measures of player performance, and to a certain extent there’s no helping some people if they want to cling to their chosen ignorance with desperation. But others DO listen, and that’s where finer scalpels can make healthy openings. Don’t overcomplicate the approach; when someone was underappreciated in his own time (koff Blyleven koff), move beyond the failings of the past and shine today’s clearer, cleaner light upon a candidate without introducing more noise than signal. Keep It Simple, as it were. We’re not trying to sway Nobel Prize winners; they are sportswriters.
Last tip, and this won’t be popular, but some fans really, really need to give up on electoral deadwood, men who had their seasons in the sun and were really good but not Hall-class great. I’ll not name names, but there are some who are always going to be at the head of the line on the other side of the Hall’s velvet rope, and that’s simply inevitable. Someone has to be The Best Player Not In The Hall.
(And, sidebar, stumping for those few who might (might!) be Hall-worthy were it not for special circumstances, for which the Hall rejects their candidacies outright, is a waste of time. Now, that’s YOUR time to waste, but to what end are you squandering it?)
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Short summary: raise the issue and stay on message. Promote why a given candidate is Hall worthy. Leave other names out of it. A career great enough for Hall consideration shouldn’t need to stand on crutches.
we cant,,they should have fans vote for the players,
we should be allowed to vote but as fans we are more inclined to vote for the people we like and not the people who deserve to get in some people may vote for Mark Mcguire, Barry bonds,Pete Rose and roger clemens and that is why we can not vote but we must put it in the hands of people outside of politics the people voting right now don’t care for the game but they are doing a decent job and when time comes that they are doing horribly we will rise and put the voting into someone else’s hands.
Only members of the Baseball Writers Association of America have votes. The writers could care less what you think.
I can’r magine that we the fans would have an impartial view of the pool of potential Hall of Fame talent. Lets face it the fans of a particular player would vote that way. I would. If I could Don Mattingly would be in but does he really deserve the Hall, probably not. Thats what I mean. A lot of undeserving players would make it because it might become a show for favorites rather than deserving.
There is no easy fix.
every newspaper is available online and has blogs as well as contact info for the sports editor. We need to pay attention to the sportswriters, contact them directly and use their online blogs, and editor contacts to express our feelings. They will listen to intelligent thought out responses. The you suck sort with I feel responses with no statistical backup won’t get the job done. I am on a personal quest to see a few shortstops in the Hall, probably won’t happen because todays writers only consider great hitting as influencing the game. Brooks Robinson can get in for defense at third but not a Maury Wills type that helped his team get to the series with exceptional defense and speed
I think the biggest thing that we can do to make our voice heard is to flood the Hall of Fame with mail about change. Diplomacy in the wording is a key, if you call them a bunch of morons right off the bat there will be no coorespondence. Give them real solutions to change the current mess that they now have. Maybe propose a three headed monster of writers, former players/mlb people (coaches, managers, scouts…) and select fans. Notice I say select fans because opening the HOF voting to the fans like the All-Star debacle that we have would be horrible…the first year Rex Hudler would get a bunch of votes because people think he is cool on TV. It would have to be fans that have proven their knowledge to the HOF by passing a tough test on Baseball.
I think that it is a flawed system now but please oh please do not give the whole thing to the fans!
We have to do something that matters and have Bud Selig hear us! Letters, sit-ins, demonstrations–have a point and back it up with proof.