Here is what I think about Jack Morris and the baseball Hall of Fame.
Jack Morris does not belong in the Hall of Fame.
He does not belong in the Hall of Fame because he wasn't good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. He had a 3.90 career ERA, and that nonsense about "pitching to the score" has been conclusively disproven. He won more games than anyone else in the 80s but A)wins are kind of wonky anyway when you play for a high-scoring team like he did and B)shift that arbitrary cutoff date a year or two either way and he's suddenly not on the top of the list any more. He pitched a great game in the World Series once, but so did Don Larsen. He was a good pitcher, but really the arguments for him boil down to the porn-stached pitcher equivalent of "Jim Rice was feared!"
But.
When Morris gets into the Hall of Fame - and he will, either through the writers' vote this year or the Veterans' Committee a few years down the line - it will not be the end of the universe. The Hall of Fame will not cease to be an interesting museum about enshrining the best of baseball, and nobody's gonna die over this. (Not even Brian Kenny, though he may come close) And I will not feel compelled to throw myself into the Serpentine over the horrible miscarriage of justice a Jack Morris election will represent.
Yeah, there are a lot of things broken about the Hall of Fame. A Morris election will get tossed on the pile. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not quite Frodo-to-the-Mountain level stuff. So when it happens, I will breathe deep, grumble, and then remind myself that Bert Blyleven got in before Morris did.
Perspective. It's a wonderful thing.
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