1 Happy St

Every year, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) gets to vote for Hall of Fame inductees. Prior to the voting, you’ll always hear from members of the BBWAA telling us who they will be voting for and who they won’t be voting for and why. It’s a big joke really since the criteria for getting voted seems to change every year. But this year, the main discussion has been whether or not Mark McGwire will get elected since he allegedly took steroids and we can’t have someone like that associated with the HOF and voting for him sends the wrong message to kids and we need to teach someone a lesson and who better to teach a lesson to than this guy and blah blah blah nonsense nonsense.

It’s enough to make your head spin really because one, he’s never been proven to have actually taken steroids. Two, the banning of steroids wasn’t enforced by the league until after he retired. And three, even if he did take steroids, who are we to get all high and mighty about it after the fact when we didn’t seem to care at the time he played? Regardless, there will probably be enough people who vote for this thing who will in fact get all high and mighty about it and keep him out. But I wouldn’t. I’d vote him in and give him his own wing at the museum. I’d call it “The Steroids Wing”. Who wouldn’t want to check that out? The only problem with the steroids wing is that the plaques with the heads of the players on it would have to be twice as big, and that could cause budget concerns in the future.

But here are a few other fringe HOF’ers that I’d vote for and why:

Dave Concepcion: He didn’t do anything particularly worthy when you look at his overall statistics, but there’s an old Topps baseball card of his from the 70’s where he’s wearing a generic red hat with no logo on it (kind of like something you’d see in a Frosted Flakes commercial). Actually, it was more pink than red which leads me to believe that there was a guy working at Topps at the time the card was manufactured who made it like that as a joke, but then never fixed it and it got shipped out like that. Regardless, any guy with a baseball card that cheesy definitely gets my vote.

Andre Dawson: His nickname was "The Hawk" even though he was about as graceful as a drunk 3-legged horse. He’d get my vote, then I’d have a continuous video at the museum showing him chasing after doubles in the right-field corner and legging out slow-rolling grounders during his Cubs days.

Jack Morris: Another guy who probably didn’t do enough statistically, but he made up for it in cheesy facial hair. Are you seeing the pattern here folks? Cheesy equals vote from me.

And finally Pete Rose: He could quite possibly be the only guy in history to get booed during his acceptance speech. We have the opportunity to make it happen, but we’re letting it slip away.