Why I still care about the Hall of Fame

It's somewhat hip to not care who gets into the Hall of Fame these days, but I'm not there yet. Here's why.

Last year, Marc Normandin wrote about why he stopped caring about the Hall of Fame. In previous years, I worked with Jeff Sullivan, who was delighted to let me write about the Hall of Fame so he didn't have to. When I asked him why, he responded:

Hard enough to rationalize writing about a game. Really can't rationalize writing about a museum about a game.

There's a sneaky subset of baseball fan that doesn't care at all about the Hall. My goodness, does that seem like a refreshing way to go through life.

Unfortunately, I have the disease. I care about the Hall of Fame. So help me, I care. I spend my time writing about Edgar Martinez and writing about him again, and believe me, my head is down when I'm writing those words, like Schroeder at his piano, furiously and futilely attempting to change minds. Martinez not being in the Hall is a dripping faucet in the bedtime of my soul, and he might not be one of the top 10 players not inducted. There are other, worse travesties, and I care about them. Help me. I care.

This means it's probably a good time to ask why.

Why do I care about the Hall of Fame? How can a museum thousands of miles away affect my mood? I disagree with the specifics of how writers vote, I'm skeptical of the credentials of more than a few writers who vote, the PED moralizing and posturing is unfathomably obnoxious, and I've never even been to the museum. Why does the place make me daydream and disagree and proselytize and bloviate? What sort of madness, some dark power is this?

Before I answer, it's probably a good idea to investigate the reasons I shouldn't care. It's one reason, mostly. The best baseball player I've ever watched, the best baseball player millions of people have ever watched, will not be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Tuesday. He won't be inducted for decades, if ever. He defined the sport, good and bad, for decades, and he did things we'll never see again. Barry Bonds isn't going to have a plaque in the Hall of Fame, which should make the place useless.

Which probably does make the place useless.

I keep going back to Mike Schmidt's comments from 2005. The greatest third baseman of all-time has a better grasp of context and human nature than most Hall of Fame voters:

"Let me go out on a limb and say that if I had played during that era I would have taken steroids," said Schmidt

...

"Again, I'm weak. We all have these things we deal with in life, and I'm surely not going to sit here and say to you guys, 'I wouldn't have done that.' "

The point he's trying to make is simple. There is ambiguity with PED users and the Steroid Era, not binary truths and moral certainties. It seems like that should be a starting point, something we all agree on. Except people really do whittle it down to "cheat bad, no player cheat good," which is their prerogative, I suppose.

But Schmidt is indirectly making another point: Without players like Barry Bonds, the Hall of Fame becomes the Hall of Great Players Who Didn't Have the Opportunity to Cheat in a Very Specific Way at the Perfect Time. Not voting for players like Bonds and Roger Clemens is a punishment for an ethical decision the vast majority of Hall of Famers never got an opportunity to make. The history of the sport is overstuffed with anecdotal evidence that "By any means necessary" was the dominant philosophy of almost every era, not "Let's play two!" Yet we're supposed to pretend that Bonds and Clemens are somehow worse human beings than other players in the Hall, that they failed a moral test their predecessors passed.

We're supposed to pretend that Bonds and Clemens didn't exist, that when listing the greatest players in baseball history, they don't deserve mention because of a choice they made that seemed a helluva lot more innocuous at the time. Obvious steroid users were feted. A reporter who questioned tubs of muscle-building power was vilified. Players who took steroids back then got magazine covers:

Those players got trophies and plaques, they got interviews with Barbara Walters. Yet everyone had an idea what was going on. Captain Renault-like outrage only plays to people young enough to have missed that era. The deeper ethical concerns weren't debated back then, which isn't a surprise, considering they still aren't being debated.

Because of revisionist history, the museum in question isn't going to celebrate several of the best players in the history of the sport. Because of convenient moralizing, because of post-hoc rationalizations, because of smug righteousness. This makes the museum worse. It makes it easier to ignore the museum. It might make it necessary to ignore the museum.

And yet I still care. Back to the opening question: Why?

As much as I want to write "dunno" and get on with the rest of my day, I think I've figured it out. As a baseball fan, much less a baseball writer, I enjoy the qualifier. It's a part of the lexicon, a way to describe a player simply in three words: Hall of Famer. It's why I care about All-Stars and Rookies of the Year, too. Those three words pack carry so much weight. Greg Maddux, Hall of Famer. Ron Santo, Hall of Famer. If you have the time to unpack it, great. If you don't have the time, it's a great shorthand way to condense decades of a player's career into a dense, collapsed star of information. It says, start with this player and his peers if you want to know the history of baseball. Start with this player and seek out others like him.

That's why I care. And that's why I'm going to stop caring soon, I'm scared/elated to say. That simple qualifier, those three code words, already need extra help. Hall of Famer isn't good enough. It needs to be "player who played at a Hall of Fame level" or "player who should be in the Hall of Fame" or some other contortion. And if the reason I care has to do with the description, the instant opinions and associations that the label brings, the reason to care becomes a lot more compelling the more perverted the Hall gets.

I still care about the Hall of Fame. I still enjoy writing about it, still enjoy the debates. But it's a downward trend. With each January announcement, each passing year with the museum used as a reward for meritorious conduct instead of as a place to tell the story of baseball, I'll care a little less. Maybe one day, I'll stop caring altogether.

I can only hope. Seems so danged freeing.

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