If I Had A Hall Of Fame Vote.

Well, loyal TBF readers, 2014 is coming to a close. It's been one hell of a year, but I suppose you could say that about any year. However, as we head into 2015, we approach the most aggravating, stressful, and disappointing season of all: the Hall of Fame voting and the subsequent announcement of the results.

My feelings towards the members of the BBWAA (Baseball Writers' Association of America) have never been kept secret. While it's an organization I aspire to join one day, I'm not so enamored of the archaic set of standards many of these reporting relics hold dear. For example, take Ken Gurnick, who covers the Dodgers for MLB.com and wielded the great power of his HOF vote last year by putting Jack Morris on his ballot along with...nobody else. In a year that Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas were all slam-dunk first-balloters, Gurnick cast his vote for a single pitcher whose admittedly impressive counting stats belied his average peripherals and called it a day. His rationale? Morris won more games in the 1980s than any other pitcher. Hell, what more do you need? It's not like wins are more of a team-dependent stat than a pitcher-dependent one, and it's also not like there are far more effective stats one can use to properly determine a pitcher's value outside of an arbitrary win or loss. The problem is not that Gurnick decided to give Morris full support in his last year of eligibility, it's that he didn't seem to find any other candidates, a group that also included the greatest hitting catcher of all time (Mike Piazza, now on his third ballot), a guy who hit more doubles than any other right handed hitter in history (Craig Biggio, on his third ballot after missing election by two votes last year), one of the most dominant postseason pitchers ever (Curt Schilling, you guessed it, third ballot), and those steroid-addled monsters who rank in the top 10 players of all time (Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both on ballot number 3), worthy of induction. The mind reels.

I'm not getting into all the stigma surrounding PED players like Bonds, Clemens and others of their ilk. I've spent too many hours poring over posts, texts, comments, and angry conversations with my friends to waste much more time on this subject. In short: steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs were not illegal in baseball until 2005, which is also when the drug testing started. If you're going to fault a professional athlete with an unbreakable drive for taking a substance that was not against the rules in an attempt to extend their career, then you don't deserve a HOF ballot. Period. You're not seeing the forest for the juiced up trees. Bonds and Clemens both dominated the league from the mid 1980s until 2007, when both retired. Only in the final 2 years of their concurrent careers were these substances outlawed. So, for the 20 or so years prior to that, they were simply taking advantage of what was available to them. I'd like to see one sportswriter with a self-proclaimed "strong moral compass" admit that they wouldn't have done the same.

But I digress, as I often do. You won't find any grandstanding in regards to synthetically enhanced players in this blog. I simply look at the stats, combine that with what these players meant to the game, and decide who should go to Cooperstown from that. Many writers with an actual vote appear to take a similar, rational approach to their ballots, which gives me hope that they're not all fools like Gurnick. The reasoning should be simple: if you can't talk about baseball during the time period in which one of these guys played without mentioning them and their contributions, they're a Hall of Famer. It shouldn't be more difficult than that.

So, without any further ado, here's what my 2015 Hall of Fame ballot would look like, if I actually had one:

1. Randy Johnson
2. Pedro Martinez
3. John Smoltz
4. Craig Biggio
5. Barry Bonds
6. Roger Clemens
7. Mike Piazza
8. Tim Raines
9. Curt Schilling
10. Jeff Bagwell

Two caveats: I'm more of a hitting enthusiast, but there are simply too many deserving pitchers on the ballot for me to include players like Larry Walker, Edgar Martinez and Gary Sheffield; and I really want to see Biggio and Bagwell become the first Astros inducted into the Hall. I'm sure that many baseball fans would find fault with this ballot, or the inclusion of some of the names on it. To me, it looks pretty solid. Cases have already been made for the Big Unit, Pedro and Smoltzy by many of those with actual votes, as unnecessary as they may have been. As I said before, Biggio missed induction by two votes last year, so it's hard to see him missing out for much longer. Bonds and Clemens are integral parts of baseball history, so that's the end of that discussion. Piazza and Schilling were always electric behind the plate and on the mound. Raines is basically Rickey Henderson Lite, and were it not for his misfortune of playing during the same stretch as the Man of Steal, he'd be more widely recognized as one of the greatest leadoff hitters of all time. Bagwell was one of the strongest slugging first basemen in history, and won the MVP of the strike-shortened 1994 season. While I doubt all 10 players listed will be inducted in the coming years (Bonds and Clemens will most likely be deceased by the time they're voted in), every single one of them should be. Sadly, some of these players and, likely, dozens who will come after will be squeezed out quicker than ever before. Recent changes to the balloting rules make it so that a player can only spend 10 years on the ballot instead of 15. This is clearly a shot across the bow to those writers that support the induction of the druggies, as their abating support will need to grow much quicker than before. Considering some of the voters are stubborn old men...scratch that, MOST of the voters are stubborn old men, the younger voices of reason won't be heard until it's too late for some of baseball's greatest legends to finally cross into the pantheon.

The Hall of Fame is a museum. It's supposed to be an instructive and comprehensive guide to the national pastime's illustrious history. It's not supposed to be a glorification of the players and eras that writers and misguided fans have collectively decided were "clean", and a willful disregarding of those that weren't by a lack of acknowledgment. How can you really expect an institution dedicated to the preservation of historical facts to omit such meaningful careers? And how long can we keep punishing these players? The fight is over. Justice, as determined by the Most Honorable Allan H. Selig, has been served. PEDs are now verboten. But that shouldn't justify retroactively vilifying the men that played when they were copacetic. While it'll be great seeing Randy, Pedro and John receive their plaques in July of next year, the picture will never be complete until the voting rules, as well as the writers who cast the ballots, undergo a significant modification.