No one gets into the Hall of Fame, no one should care

 

If the hold an election for the Hall of Fame and nobody wins, does it still count?

For the ninth time in its history the Baseball Hall of Fame held their annual selection vote and no one received the 75% necessary to enter the hallowed halls of the Hall.  Despite what you may have heard, the reason isn’t steroids.

First of all, I don’t see the failure to select someone as a negative.  It proves the Hall has some standards for admission, and won’t admit some mediocre player like Harold Baines just to avoid having no entrants (I hate to harp on the selection of Baines, who by all accounts was a nice guy, but his selection in 2019 was the worst choice for induction since the selection of Jesse Haines).  Some years there will be multiple no-brainers eligible five years after retirement; in other years the choices will be more . . . subtle.  But no entrant this year means they have some standards.

Also, it isn’t like they can’t hold an induction ceremony, since they cancelled last year’s due to COVID.   So people can still gather in Cooperstown in July and watch Derek Jeter and Larry Walker give their speeches, a long as they maintain social distance.

The main thrust among the talking heads on ESPN is that the reason for the failure to elect anyone in 2021 is the hypocrisy of keeping out Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for alleged steroids use.  The flaw in that argument is that, if not for the steroids allegations, they would have been elected on their first ballot nine years ago.  So leave the debate over steroid users for another day.

The other elephant in the room is Curt Schilling, who support hovers just below the 75% threshold.  Some call Schilling an obvious first ballot Hall of Famer, which I think is overselling it a bit.  He won 216 games, while Jim Kaat won 283 games and won 16 Gold Gloves, yet he isn’t in the Hall.  If Schilling wanted to be a first ballot no-brainer, he should have won some more games.

But he did have a Hall of Fame type career, and his post-season heroics elevate his candidacy above those of players who made no impression at all in the playoffs or World Series.  The problem is that Schilling himself has publicized his bigoted and homophobic views; when Schilling complains that “they” have ruined his reputation, he should really look in a mirror.  But should that keep him out of the Hall?

Lots of players are in the Hall despite being racists, bigots, and what not.  The had the name of the man who enforced the segregation of African Americans, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, on the MVP trophies until last year.  As troubling as Schilling’s beliefs are, the Hall is supposed to reflect the history of baseball, and that history includes Schilling’s bloody sock. 

There is a “character” clause in the Hall of Fame voting rules, but what counts as character?  Should it only apply to the game, and not what people do in their private lives?  Was it cheating to use amphetamines in the 1960’s and 70’s, as many players did?  Are all the members of the 2019 Huston Astros ineligible for the Hall of Fame because the team won a World Series because they cheated?  If it applies to activities outside the realm of baseball, what is over the line?  One accusation of spousal abuse, or does there have to be a long running pattern?  Is one DUI enough to keep Todd Helton out, or must there be repeat offenses?

If the Hall starts keeping out players because of a single incidence or allegation of wrongdoing, then the Hall will become like the San Francisco commission on school names that decided that Abraham Lincoln was evil and didn’t deserve to have a school named after him because he didn’t treat Indigenous-Americans nicely. 

I enjoy Hall of Fame debates, because they can be so multi-faceted.  How much do we discount stats from players who played in Colorado?  How much weight do we give to Gold Glove winners (Jim Kaat won 16 Gold Gloves in addition to 283 games, so they must not count for much)?  How much does post-season heroics add to a resume?  But when you start wading in to whether someone is worthy of being in the Hall of Fame, I am not sure there are clear standards.

In the movie 61*, Billy Crystal’s recreation of the Maris/Mantle duel for the home run title in 1961, there is a depiction of Yankee fans being asked who “deserved” to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season.  This is a stupid question; the person who “deserves” to break it is the man who does. 

As Clint Eastwood’s character in Unforgiven said, “Deserves got nothin’ to do with it.”

 

Newsflash: Doug Pederson lied

There is a story I once heard that I love so much I have never dared to attempt to confirm it.  When Nick Saban was coach of the Miami Dolphins, the coaching job at Alabama became available.  Supposedly someone asked him whether he was going to take the job, and he insisted he would remain the coach at Miami.  A week later, he was the head coach at Alabama.  When asked why he lied, he allegedly replied, “I didn’t lie, I said something that, in retrospect, turned out to be inaccurate.”

Phooey.  Doug Pederson lied.

Often proving someone lied is a complicated undertaking, involving intense research, uncovering sources, and using precise logic to parse what someone said.  What Doug Pederson said was, “I was trying to win the game; and I put my third string quarterback in to play in the fourth quarter of a three-point game because I wanted to give him some snaps.”  Those two statements are prima facia evidence of a lie.

The outrage over Pederson’s statements has been two-fold; some people object to him lying (or at least not putting more effort into lying more credibly), while others are distressed that not trying to win a game hurts the integrity of the game.  Oh, and there are New York Giants fans who are livid that their 6-10 football team was denied a chance to host an NFC playoff game.

The last is easily dismissed; if you want to host a playoff game, then win more than 6 games.  But the first two are worthy of discussion as to whether they are a fundamental breech of protocol in the National Football League.

Coaches lie all the time.  Coaches may say with a straight face that even though the team is 1-6 they expect to make the playoffs.  Coaches may reassure a player that he won’t lose his job because he got injured (I’m sure someone said that to Drew Bledsoe when he was taken out for an injury and replaced by a kid named Tom Brady).  But these are just examples of things that in retrospect turned out to be inaccurate. 

Pederson was NOT playing to win.  What coach, down by three points with a quarter to play, would think of putting in the third string quarterback as a way of increasing his team’s chance of winning, when the first and second string quarterbacks are both healthy?  The lie is so transparent, it becomes an insult.  How stupid do you think we are, to tell us you were trying to win because Nick Sudfeld is a much better QB than Jalen Hurts?  Of course, if Pederson honestly thinks that Nick Sudfeld is a better QB than Jalen Hurts, then it raises a new set of questions about Doug Pederson’s qualifications.

There is some speculation that Pederson was ordered to throw the game by the GM or the team’s owner, in order to get the 6^th draft pick instead of the 9^th.  If that is true, then Pederson should have said, “The owner told me not to win the game.  If you have any further questions, ask him.” 

Let’s skip over the blatant lying and look at the other source of disgust, the fact that Pederson wasn’t trying to win the game, he was trying to put the Eagles draft pick at #6 instead of #9.   Other teams, like the Steelers who had locked in their playoff slot, rested starters and lost to the Browns.  If they don’t try to win, why should we criticize Doug Pederson for doing what’s in the franchise’s best interest?

But the Steelers weren’t trying to lose, as the closeness of the Brown’s two-point win demonstrates.  They weren’t broken up about losing, but they were playing to win in the context that the week 17 game meant very little, and the first-round playoff game meant a lot.  Pederson pulled the Eagles’ starting QB with 12 minutes to play and down by three, and also didn’t go for a Hail Mary on the last play of the game.  That’s not resting starters, that is sabotaging the outcome.

And his reason wasn’t because Jalen Hurts was injured, or too tired to continue.  He wanted Nick Sudfeld to “get some snaps.”  First, why do you care if your third string QB gets playing time?  Do you really expect him to compete for the starting job next year with Hurts and Wentz?  Second, if you want him to get snaps, why wasn’t he put in at the end of the Cowboys game the week before, when the Eagles were down 30-17 in the 4^th quarter, instead of a winnable game when the Eagles were down only by three at the start of the 4^th quarter?  Third, why not take Sudfeld out after his interception and lost fumble?  Hadn’t you seen enough at that point to remember why Sudfeld is NOT your starter?

Of course, you might have put Wentz in at that point, but he’d already been scratched despite being perfectly healthy.  He probably needed a game off given how hard he’d been working in his new role as the back-up QB.

And what did Pederson gain by giving Sudfeld “some snaps”?  His credibility is shot, his players have denounced him, and he lost a winnable game.  Was it worth it to give Nick Sudfeld “some snaps”?  I doubt it.  Now we need to wait and see if it lost him his job.  If the owner doesn’t fire him, then maybe we do know where the order to throw the game came from.