Hall Vote Shifts Too Far From Honorees

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

When I was an eight-year-old Little League baseball player, my coach (who also happened to be my father) asked me what number I wanted to wear for the season. I didn't even think twice. I took Andre Dawson's No. 8. It was an added bonus that we were the blue team in the league, so it felt like I was getting to play in my favorite player's jersey for the 1987 season.

Fast forward 23 summers and the Hawk will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I should be excited. While he isn't my favorite player of all-time (that "honor" belongs to Mark Grace), he was my childhood baseball hero. I worked on my throwing arm from right field to eliminate loops and make it a line drive like Dawson. I tried out a batting stance with the back foot lagged like Dawson. I despised every bone in Eric Show's body the day that he beaned Hawk in the eye.

Yet when I heard MLB Network announce that he was inducted to the Hall of Fame alone, my initial thought was not anything resembling happiness. With Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven not joining Dawson, I had one simple thought: "Here we go again."

The election process isn't about the players anymore.

Sure, their names are included in discussions, but the names are just words. It's a mathematical problem. It's a pissing contest. It's "I'm smarter than you because ... " It's "you are stupid if you don't agree with me, because I'm right and here's why."

I'm not saying I'm any better. I'm not. I take as much part as anyone and I definitely wish more people agreed with me on several of these guys who could make the Hall. You want to know a few of my opinions? OK, here goes:

Blyleven - In

Alomar - should have been on the first ballot

Barry Larkin - In

Jack Morris - Out

Mark McGwire - In

There are more, obviously, but that's not the point of what I'm writing now.

Here's the real point: I'm not right and neither are you. It's impossible to be right when we're talking about opinion.

Due to the Internet -- which, don't get me wrong, was a great invention by Al Gore -- anyone can jump on and express their opinion. Great writers like Joe Posnanski, who would otherwise be restricted to weekly articles in Sports Illustrated, get to bless us with millions of words on personal blogs. Rich Lederer gets to accurately sell the rest of the world on Blyleven's candidacy for the Hall -- Blyleven even specifically thanked him by name Wednesday on the MLB Network.

On the other hand, people who never watched someone play parrot the opinions of these -- and other -- great writers as their own. I'd be willing to wager Blyleven is more popular now than he ever was as a player. In fact, I bet it's not even close. One site staged their own voting process and he received over 90 percent of their votes -- meanwhile Alomar, easily the better major leaguer, wouldn't have even qualified for the Hall based upon the 75 percent barrier.

Again, I'm no better. I've been sold by people like Posnanski on Blyleven's numbers. I had to be, because the majority of Blyleven's career happened either before I was born or before I actually followed baseball closely. I have formed the opinion that he should definitely be in.

That doesn't mean I'm going to sit here and fight someone to the death if they don't think Blyleven belongs. Again, it's a matter of opinion.

The only facts in the discussion are the numbers already on record, but you can make numbers do whatever you want. You can find guys not in the Hall who did something better and you can find guys in the Hall who did something worse. It's a fun game for this time of year, but it's taken away from the players themselves. On MLB Network Wednesday, Harold Reynolds actually had to say, "Let's not get away from who did get in," when the discussion began to center on Blyleven and Alomar immediately after the announcement.

Is there a way to dumb ourselves down, just for a quick moment, and reminisce?

Remember when we all first became baseball fans? It was a game. It was fun. We weren't worried about whether Jim Rice or Andre Dawson had the better Hall of Fame resume. We weren't terrified that Bert Blyleven wouldn't make the Hall or that Robbie Alomar wouldn't get in on the first ballot. We just wanted to watch our favorite players play the game we all loved.

Personally, I wanted to watch Andre Dawson hit for the cycle before I headed to my Little League game wearing that blue No. 8, so I could try to do the same. I have a feeling if I could go back in time and tell my eight-year-old self that Hawk was a Hall of Famer, my reaction would have been a bit different than the one I had Wednesday.

I simply would have smiled, pumped a fist and yelled, "YES!"

It's a kid's game, so every once in a while it doesn't hurt to act like a kid again. Even if just for a moment.