Dodgers' Beat Reporter Votes Morris Into HOF, Excludes Everyone Else
By: Evan Jankens
@kingofthekc
Making the baseball hall of fame is going to continue to be difficult for the next 15 years or so. Baseball has their writers vote on who gets into the hall and over the last few years players have suffered if they were part of "the steroid era."
It also seems like beat writers are starting to make the hall of fame more about them than the actual player.
Dodgers' beat writer Ken Gurnick, for instance, voted only for ex-Tigers' star Jack Morris, explaining how he voted on MLB.com:
Morris has flaws -- a 3.90 ERA, for example. But he gets my vote for more than a decade of ace performance that included three 20-win seasons, Cy Young Award votes in seven seasons and Most Valuable Player votes in five. As for those who played during the period of PED use, I won't vote for any of them.
Good for Jack Morris, I guess.
Gurnick won't vote for Greg Maddux because he played during the period of PED use. This dude has to be joking, right? If there is one guy who never appeared to use PEDs, it has to be Greg Maddux. The dude who wore glasses and was -- for lack of a better term -- pudgy is going to be held off of a voters' ballot because of who played in Major League Baseball at the same time he did?
Maddux pitched for 23 years, won 355 games and has a career ERA of 3.16. Those are hall of fame numbers? Did I mention he is a four-time Cy Young winner? Those four Cy Young awards...yea, they happened back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Pretty impressive, huh?
I wonder if Mr. Gurnick knows that both Morris' and Maddux's playing time overlapped by nine years (1986-1994) so in Gurnick's mind PED use must have started in 1995?
This once again brings me back to Maddux's four Cy Young awards because he won three of them before 1995. Maddux will more than likely be named to the hall of fame tomorrow, it just won't be unanimous. So why is that important, you ask? Because not one player has EVER been a unanimously voted into Cooperstown and Maddux had as good of a shot as any.
And as for kicking out anyone from the steroid era, I don't agree with it. Baseball marketed the long ball, in my opinion, knowing players were on something to make it happen.
Just check out this MLB commercial promoting "chicks dig the long ball" right after baseball returned after the strike.
If you notice, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddox in the commercial aren't too happy with the 'longball' and even state "hey, we have Cy Young award winners here!"