My Fake Hall of Fame Ballot, illustrated from the Goodwill Monster Box

Happy New Year, cardheads!

My holiday was pretty low-key. My wife and I stayed in and watched movies and got a pizza. Nothing too big deal. Last year, however….

…yes, that’s a Reykjavik New Year’s. We were there last year on our honeymoon (her father was from Iceland and she still has a lot of family there). They shoot off fireworks ALL DAY AND NIGHT and it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever experienced in real life.

A number of bloggers are doing year-in-review posts, but since pretty much my entire collection was put together in the past year, I thought I’d do a different kind of holiday post. As you might know, yesterday was the deadline for Hall of Fame ballots. With the help of my recent Goodwill monster box find…

…yeah, that one! (if you didn't see on twitter, I picked this beauty up for just $13) I’m going to share with you my hypothetical HOF ballot. I managed to find cards of nearly everyone on the ballot this year in the box, so I’ll share some of those cards below. I plan on doing a few posts from all the cool stuff I found in the box, but I gotta sort through it all a bit more first.

My 2018 Hall of Famers:

Barry Bonds & Roger Clemens

I was once dead-set against steroid guys in the Hall, but my opinions have evolved on the issue for a number of reasons. There is a lot of blame to spread around for the steroid problem beyond individual players. It also rests on the owners, management, MLB, the media… hell, even fans. All of these people should have known better. To look back now and get righteous about this is just… disingenuous. So at the moment, I’m willing to let these two guys in. And I guess I’ll draw a line on guys like Manny Ramirez, who failed tests. But I’m not sure that I really should. It’s going to a while before this whole era is really figured out.To be honest, the awful domestic violence accusations against Bonds give me more pause than the drugs.

Chipper Jones

No need to really elaborate here, he’s a clear first-ballot guy. I never really liked him though. And I’ve got a few reasons why I don’t like the Braves. But it’s always nice to see a one-team guy go in.  

Mike Mussina

The Hall needs to come to grips with the modern era of starting pitchers. Roy Halladay needs to be in, same with CC. Mussina might help to bridge that gap between the 300 win guys and the new breed.

Edgar Martinez

I don’t understand penalizing Edgar for playing most of his career at DH. It’s not like he refused to play the field and, by most measures, he was a good fielder when he did. He just didn’t have a spot in a career spent on loaded Mariners teams. He’s one of the best right-handed hitters of his era. It’s time to give him his due.

Larry Walker

He’s the tenth guy on my ballot. He did get a lot of help playing in Colorado, but he was still a very good hitter on the road throughout his career. I think the fact that he put up such crazy number in Denver actually hurts his case with some voters… like in 1999 when he batter .461 (!!!) at home. People see that and dismiss it as a byproduct of Coors Field. But it’s like the steroid thing again. Not everyone implicated hit 60 homers in a season and certainly not everyone who played at Coors averaged two hits per game there. I’m all for taking these stats within the proper context, but Walker is a Hall of Famer in any context.

Curt Schilling

This was a tough one. Schilling, on paper, is a clear Hall of Famer. His career numbers, like Mussina’s, taken with context of his era makes him a slam-dunk. But Schilling is an ignorant asshole with political views that should not exist in these modern times. I wish there was a kind of sub-vote for the Hall, wherein a player gets inducted and has their plaque put up but are not actually invited to the ceremony or mentioned during it. This would be my preference for Schilling, Bonds, and Clemens. And I think it would be the only way voters would ever allow Pete Rose to be inducted.

Vlad Guererro

Vlad the Bad was always one of my favorites as a kid. He was a just a damned joy to watch.

Jim Thome

I’m a little surprised that Thome seems primed to coast in on his first ballot. I thought, as a big power guy, he might encounter some resistance because of his big power era. But voters seem to like the absolute lack of any PED whispers. It’s like a Frank Thomas case, even though Thome was about 80% of the hitter Thomas was.

Johan Santana

Ok, I KNOW there was a Santana card in this box, but I cannot find it. So in Johan’s place, I’ve got this nifty Gregg Jefferies who – as anyone who was collecting in the late 80s knows – remains a sure-fire Hall of Famer, even after falling off the ballot on his first try. It’ll just take some veteran’s committee… perhaps the committee on 1989 Beckett Monthly HOT LIST players… to put him in. Anyway, Johan Santana is a somewhat lesser version of Sandy Koufax. I’m serious, look at the numbers and keep in mind the time in which they played AND that Koufax got to pitch every other game at Dodger Stadium and they had VERY similar careers. If Santana doesn’t get some serious consideration at some point (it’s almost certain he’ll drop off the ballot after this year), future Hall classes are going to be 80-90% position players.

Anyway, that’s my pretend ballot. Feel free to call me names in the comments.