Let the Gnashing of Teeth Commence

Your guy didn't get into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. He was the best player on your favorite team or he once signed an autograph for your kid when he didn't have to. Enlightened voters recognize how great he was but the majority has failed to achieve that exalted state. Or he's one of the greatest players of all time and you feel that the bellyaching about unproven drug use is utterly beside the point.

He didn't get elected by the Baseball Writers this year but he might next year, or the year after, or in 2016.

Or a guy you despise did get in. You hate him. He always killed your team. He cursed out your kid in a parking lot. He wasn't as good a player as that other guy who is still waiting.

Whatever the reason, you are taking it out on the Baseball Writers this year. They're a sclerotic old lot who get positions for life even if they haven't covered a game since Duffy Dyer's Expo season. Their ranks don't include broadcasters, meaning cantankerous Neanderthal Murray Chass has a vote, but Vin Scully does not. They couldn't find their way to enshrine seven or eight surefire Hall of Famers this year after failing to elect anyone last year. Let the gnashing of teeth commence.

At the risk of defending a generally incompetent lot, calm down. The selection committee, whoever they've been over the years, has done a pretty good job of honoring the worthy eventually and declining the rest. Who's the worst player elected in the last 40 years by the writers? (Not by the Veterans Committee, which has an execrable record of throwing the doors open for their friends.) Tony Perez? Andre Dawson? Kirby Puckett? Catfish Hunter? Bruce Sutter? There's a level of nitpicking there, no?

It's not like U.L. Washington earned a spot because of his unique toothpicking abilities. Within a couple of percentage points, the crowd wisdom, even of baseball writers, knows wheat from chaff.

Who is the best player definitively barred in the last generation? (Let's skip Mike Piazza, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling and their ilk. They are still eligible for election.) Lou Whitaker? Bobby Grich? David Cone? 

The BBWAA sometimes takes a circuitous route, but they ultimately get it right 98% of the time. It's a standard we'd be thrilled to apply to government social programs (they'd all disappear), blog predictions and gas gauges. (But not to airplane flights.) Cell coverage is spotty and you have to reboot your computer a lot more than two percent of the time.

So cut the Hall some slack. The backlog will work itself out. Biggio and Bagwell will get in. The steroid guys are a complication whose code no one has yet cracked. And if they crash on Edgar Martinez or Tim Raines, well, we all have our blind spots. As Mets announcer Bob Murphy used to say, that's why they put erasers on pencils.

And in case you're wondering why Jack Morris ultimately fell short, consider this: To end his career with Morris's IP and ERA+, Kevin Appier would need to throw 1228 2/3 more innings with a 6.23 ERA. If you think Kevin Appier's career, with seven full seasons of well below-replacement level pitching added on, equals a Hall of Famer, then you have a right to be upset. But you wouldn't have the acumen of a baseball writer.