A Baseball Travesty

Pud Galvin.
Cap Anson.
Ty Cobb.
Tris Speaker.

These are some of the most famous men ever to play major league baseball. All of them have been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. All of them had superb career accomplishments:

Galvin won 365 major league baseball games. He was the first pitcher to win 300 games, and was the all-time leader in wins when he retired. He still ranks 5th on the all-time list. He also took steroids during the 1889 season.

Anson played an astounding 27 seasons -- the first 27 seasons of major league baseball. He was the first player to collect 3000 major league hits, and was the all-time leader in hits when he retired. He still ranks 6th on the all-time list. He was also a racist whose refusal to take the field against a team with black players in 1887 led to the establishment of baseball's notorious color barrier.

Cobb was baseball's greatest hitter. He was the first player to collect 4000 hits. He won 11 batting titles, was the all-time leader in hits and many other statistical categories when he retired. His career average of .366 remains the highest in major league history. He was also a notorious racist, and he also once beat up a man with no hands, who responded to spectator pleas to stop by responding, "I don't care if he's got no feet!"

Speaker was one of baseball's great hitters. His lifetime .345 average is 6th all-time, and he remains the career leader in doubles with 792. He also conspired, along with Cobb and two others, to fix a baseball game in 1919.

These 4 men are just a few of the many rogues who have been inducted in to the Hall of Fame. There are many others: Mickey Mantle used steroids in 1961, Hank Aaron used amphetamines, and Gaylord Perry practically flaunted his used of the banned spitball.

Today? Today baseball is pure. The voters of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) elected nobody to the Hall of Fame. Rather than elect players caught or even suspected of using steroids, they elected themselves as guardians of the "integrity" of the game. Some even proved their piety by submitting blank ballots; I wonder how many of them voted for Gaylord Perry or have their own rap sheet.

So, the greatest overall hitter of the last half century (or, possibly, ever) is excluded. A pitcher with 7 Cy Young Awards is excluded. The greatest hitting catcher of all time -- someone who was never caught, never named in any report, but was "suspected" in large part because his offensive numbers were too good -- is excluded. A 3000 hit man who was suspected by exactly nobody... not in. Apparently, these men aren't good enough to join the saints already enshrined, and we are to pretend that the past quarter century simply... didn't happen.

I have written about Barry Bonds before, and I'm pretty sure he did happen. And there will be a ceremony this summer, and 3 men will be inducted then. One of them is the man who built the Yankees dynasty, Colonel Jacob Ruppert. During the prohibition era, Ruppert brilliantly used part of his fortune from brewing beer to buy the best white players from poorer teams, thus starting the Yankees on a 4 decade run as baseball's premiere team. His induction is long overdue.