Terry Mosher
I have been voting for the National Baseball of Fame since 1985 and this year’s ballot has been the toughest by far for me, as well as for others. There are 36 players on the ballot – a player must be retired five years to be eligible for the vote – and I pre-checked 19 of them as worthy of being inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
Yet, you are allowed to vote for no more than 10.
So that presented a huge dilemma.
Former Bremerton Sun sportswriter Harland Beery, who lives in Silverdale, also has a Hall of Fame vote. He’s been voting longer than me, and he noticed the same problem this year – too few votes for far too many.
Harland, though, looks at the ballot different than I do. He figures if a player is on the ballot he’s eligible to be voted for. Thus, he votes for guys I refuse to vote for.
“In (Barry) Bonds’ case, he was a Hall of Famer before it was suspicious he was on drugs,” says Harland. “To me, it’s just a matter of degree. Nobody has ever proved that Babe Ruth got better because he drank so much. There were a lot of other guys that as far as I was concerned had loose lives. It’s not for me to be judgmental of who the bad guy was really and who wasn’t.
“(Mickey) Mantle admitted (he drank). There have been a lot of drinkers. One year (1973), two Yankee pitchers (Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich) traded wives. So there have been a bunch of horses…t players. That year (1973) could have been the all-time year.”
Those 19 I pre-checked did not include the five guys suspected of or have admitted to steroid use. So, essentially, given that everything else was equal and there were no serious concerns about drug use, I figured there were 24 players out of the 36 I deemed worthily of being in the Hall of Fame.
I, for the moment, refuse to vote for those suspected of using chemicals to enhance their performances. They are Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa.
Harland, as you will see, votes for some of those five.
There will come a time when I will finally lift my embargo on Bonds. I believe he was a Hall of Fame guy (as does Harland) before he allegedly began using performance enhancing dugs (PEDs). And I would put the start of his suspected use right about 2000 when that summer he turned 36.
Baseball players began to peak out about the age of 32. Now as you and I know, everybody is different. Some of us will peak out before then and some after. But, generally, the early 30s is about when serious athletes start to see some decline in their abilities.
Barry Bonds
Bonds, on the other hand, not only did not decline, but he took off into the stratosphere. In 1999, Bonds played in just 102 games because of injuries and hit .282 with 34 home runs and 83 RBI. Those are pretty good numbers for a guy who was 35. But his numbers just get better and better from there through the 2004 season when he was 40.
He missed most of the 2005 season with a knee injury and then came back to have mediocre seasons for him and then hung up his spikes when he was about to turn 43. By the time he did hang ‘em up, there were serious concerns about him as it relates to steroid use.
Anyway, even without those five, the problem of getting down to a workable 10 meant I had to pass over nine others who I believe should be in the Hall of Fame. In many of the previous years, it was difficult to find 10 guys to vote for. You don’t have to vote for 10, but I always have.
I ended up voting for Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Craig Biggio, Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling and Edgar Martinez.
Harland voted for Bagwell, Bonds, Clemens, Maddux, Martinez, McGwire, Morris, Schilling, Lee Smith and Soza.
“There are a majority of people on our list this time that have legitimate claims to be considered,” says Harland, noting players like Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Palmeiro, Kenny Rogers, Thomas, Larry Walker and Alan Trammell certainly had good enough careers to be considered.
“There have not been many better infielders, offensively and defensively, then Trammwell,” says Harland.
But like me, he could only vote for 10 so guys like Trammwell got left off this time around.