Tuesday, January 08, 2013

A Modest Proposal, Baseball HoF Edition

Currently, a player needs to have been retired for five (5) years to be eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame.
Many, many voters, having somehow not had sufficient time during those five (5) years between the last pitch and the ballot to determine whether a player was great or not, have publicly stated that they "need another year" to determine someone's worthiness, or want to "wait a year" to figure out their vote or "don't think anyone should ever go in on the first ballot".
Therefore, I propose that eligibility be shifted back to six (6) years after retirement. That will give those writers who are unable to make up their minds about someone's career in five (5) years that extra one (1) year they so clearly need. And, since no one will ever be going in after a mere five (5) years of retirement, no future inductees will stand a chance of outdoing the Hall of Fame voting feats of the various greats already enshrined there, thus rendering happy those voters who could not stand to see modern players get in five (5) years with possibly more votes than players of old.
Also, as numerous players (c.f. Morris, Jack) appear to have gotten significantly greater at playing baseball since they retired and stopped playing baseball, pushing the vote back one (1) year will allow them to acquire even more greatness than if they were being voted on after a mere five (5) years. With that in mind, one might even consider pushing the first ballot back to ten (10) years, or, in a more extreme version of the proposal, until the player has gone on to their final reward, thus ensuring that in their posthumous state, they have achieved maximum greatness and can no longer accrue greater levels of being great, being a winner, pitching to the score, or being feared (with the standard caveat that should the zombie apocalypse occur, the last value is subject to change).
This we, the staff of Sportstodoxy, humbly submit for your consideration.

No comments: