Thread by @StlCardsCards, And yeah, I'm a Hall of Fame honk, so I'm going to [...]

And yeah, I'm a Hall of Fame honk, so I'm going to keep tweeting about it. In fact, I'm going to tell you, in this thread, how you've been manipulated.

Your idea of what a Hall of Famer is, is screwed up. By you I mean the average twitter baseball fan, which makes you more fervent than the average baseball consumer. You're hear reading tweets about baseball from randos, so you're probably pretty into it. But still screwed up.

and that's because of how we talk about the Hall of Fame, and Hall of Fame voting. The writer's vote is the biggest event of the year. And the 75% threshold, especially with a vote limit, is incredibly tough. And the writers themselves are historically tough.

Let's not forget that in the first vote, in 1936, Babe Ruth had 11 voters not vote for him, and he only finished tied for 2nd behind Ty Cobb. Cy Young and Rogers Hornsby finished with less than half the vote. For Cy Young and Rogers Hornsby.

Usually with the writer's vote, and the high threshold, and the toughness, the discussion is framed around who has a chance to get in with the current vote, and we have conflated that with "what is a hall of famer" and that's wrong.

so when players get advocated for, such as a Scott Rolen, the advocates know they have to convince tough voters, and so they do so from the standpoint of what is an average hall of famer - basically the argument is "Scott Rolen brings up the average!"

This is under the hope that by pointing out Scott Rolen is better than the average HOF 3B, that he can someday scrape the 75% mark and barely get in - and that becomes remembered, that Scott Rolen barely made it, and now in our brains from fierce debate, a player like Rolen...

suddenly becomes the minimum of what a Hall of Famer is. Someone who barely made it in because he was barely the average of a hall of famer.

AND THIS MEANS WE IGNORE 50% OF ALL HALL OF FAMERS.

So the media debate has shaped our brains around what a hall of famer is and isn't while actually erasing hall of the inductees from our consciousness.

Let me tell you how I think of the Hall:

you've heard the ideals of the criminal justice system is to let 10 guilty go free rather than jail one innocent.

The Hall should be the opposite. Even if some less deserving make it in, by God we should be sure the Ted Simmons of the world, the Curt Floods of the world, MAKE IT

and here people scream about making the Hall watered down and such, and Harold Baines is here to tell you why it's bull.

Harold's induction was widely panned. Widely. Personally, I doubt he'd be in my Hall of Fame either, even as wide net as I cast. /

But people think he's the worst, and he's not near the worst. There are many worse. Rick Ferrell is in the Hall of Fame. You've never heard of Rick Ferrell. Oh, FYI, he played 8 years in St. Louis and you've still never heard of him.

and yet, here we are in 2019, and we scream year after year about inducting people and our fears about the Hall of Fame not mattering, and here is Rick Ferrell, belonging to an exclusive club Larry Walker can't get in, and yet the debate rages on because NO ONE CARES.

That's right, Lloyd Waner is a hall of famer basically because his brother was really good, and even if you've heard of Lloyd, you still somehow care about the HOF vote. Lloyd, Waner, and Baines haven't ruined it for you.

And I'll tell you why...

the secret of the Hall is you don't actually care about who is kept out. You care about getting your players in. When you visit the Hall you don't care that Lee Smith's plaque is in the same room as Lefty Grove, you care about remembering and honoring YOUR favorite players.

to put it another way, for each Baines it's not hard to find players that baseball writers have decided wasn't worthy that you would scream bloody murder if they were removed.

Cubs fan?
would you eject Baines for Ron Santo? Would a Cards fan eject Baines for Red?

you FREAKING LOVE Red, and it would break your heart if he wasn't in the Hall, right? Take all the Baines you want, but leave me Red.

That's the Hall. That's the Hall you actually care about.

So we debate about players as borderline that are upper echelon Hall, but this thing has been around 80 years. The boundaries are well established and have been for a long time. Those boundaries EASILY include a lot of players not included, and history shows they will be.

People are debating if Scott Rolen has a plaque so he can be beside Freddie Lindstrom for God's sake. Have you heard of him? Does knowing he's in the Hall make it worse for you? Now you don't care anymore? Give me a break.

So give Braves and 80s fans Dale Murphy. Even if he's not in the top half of hall of famers, he's cleary worthy of being in Hall, because there's a whole other half for fans to cherish if they want, and ignore if they don't want. It's not actually that hard.

But what you think of the Hall goes along what the writer's vote for the Hall, and it's not accurate at all. unless you want to kick out Red, Enos Slaughter, Medwick, and on and on, it's time people look at what the Hall actually is, and realize the debate is all screwed up. Fin.

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