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MLB OFFSEASON (Maybe soon???)


RIPPA

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2 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

You know, other than the juicers, I don't know if anyone else on the ballot is a lock. 

(Not trying to start a debate)

There isn't

In fact - if you look at the Hall of Fame tracker, at this moment the only people above the threshold are Ortiz (~83% of known votes), Bonds (79%) and Clemens (75%)

Bonds and Clemens will definitely fall below the threshold with the "anonymous" ballots (since most tend to be the type who don't vote for the PED users). 

Ortiz could hang on and, hoo boy, will there be some irony if he is the only one to make it

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7 minutes ago, Death From Above said:

I will never understand the narrative behind Ortiz, drug cheat, being good and everyone else being bad. In no universe do I vote Ortiz ahead of A-Rod never mind Bonds.

The one voter I saw who tried to justify used the logic that was something along the lines of "Well since MLB wouldn't confirm or deny he failed a test, we just have to take Ortiz's word for it that he didn't do it"

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Mine is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think Bonds, Clemens, Ortiz, etc. should be in.  Put an asterisk on their plaque or play a documentary explaining the steroid era next to their displays or whatever, but I don't really think steroids is what made them hall of famers.  I feel like those three - and several others - still have hall of fame numbers even once you subtract x number of hits, homers, and wins to try to come up with what their numbers should have been if they weren't juiced.  Maybe Bonds is Bobby Bonilla off the juice and Clemens is Mike Caldwell, but I doubt it.  

I mostly feel like keeping guys out on the basis of what they did off the field is a slippery slope, particularly when the argument is "no definite proof, he probably did it."  Most HoF's have already let in an interesting assortment or cheats, philanderers, racists, sociopaths, etc. and those are just the people who got unlucky and were outed.  I'm assuming that, if we dug equally into every squeaky clean athlete who had a stellar career. we'd still find out a bunch of stuff we don't want to know about some of them.  Modern fans tend to feel like cheating is a modern phenomenon, but most sports have coaches and players who were experimenting with performance enhancers since the day after the sport was invented (as well as beating their wives, betting on themselves, and being general shitbags).

Lol, my background is mostly in endurance sports.  Ran track and cross country in college; ran marathons and road races after college, along with triathlons and some cycling competitions.  Also have an interest in the history of running, cycling, and triathlon.  Lance Armstrong having a team of doctors monitor his doping regiment and administer blood transfusions is positively quaint compared to what athletes in the 19th and early 20th century did to gain an edge.  If you've ever had a desire to go back to the 1890's and let an uneducated railway worker moonlighting as a cycling coach inject you with strychnine to see if it improves your times, professional cycling may be the sport for you.

Personally, I can appreciate Roger Clemen's career and still admit he used performance enhancers at some point.  I don't think other people are wrong if they can't do that, but it's only been in the last few decades we were really educated about performance enhancers and only in the past 20-30 years that athletes really started getting put under the microscope.  I feel like I'd have to be naive not to think there are a reasonable numbers of drug cheats (and gamblers, racists, wife beaters, etc.) who played prior to 1975 already in the HoF.

So, yeah, put an asterisk or whatever you need to do, but I mostly feel like the HoF should just consider what guys did on the field unless they were convicted of serious crimes.  I don't mind that Pete Rose isn't in the HoF because he comes off as an obnoxious shithead who flaunts the rules and does tacky things like selling autographs across the street from the HoF on induction weekend, but he should be in based on his playing career.   

 

Edited by Tarheel Moneghetti
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22 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I'm fine with Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa being in with Sosa being the long shot to make it. 

McGwire deserved to be in more than Sosa.   And neither of them should have made it anyway - steroids or not.  

A Rod on the other hand...  hoo boy.  The numbers are otherworldly, but he's also never getting in (while he's alive), unless the BBWA purges their rolls again.

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2 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

This might be the funniest thing you'll see all year.  

 

At least he's not one of the many hypocrites who are voting for Ortiz but not Bonds, ARod, Manny or Sosa.

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2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

The one voter I saw who tried to justify used the logic that was something along the lines of "Well since MLB wouldn't confirm or deny he failed a test, we just have to take Ortiz's word for it that he didn't do it"

The thing about that is that they HAVE confirmed he failed a test.  As has Ortiz.  


https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2016/10/02/rob-manfred-david-ortiz-drug-test-hall-of-fame/91442256/

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/david-ortiz-says-his-failed-ped-test-leaked-because-too-many-yankees-tested-positive/

Rob Manfred said it's possible that Ortiz was a false positive, thus confirming he did, in fact, test positive.  But, hey, he gave a profane feel-good speech so we'll just pretend he didn't actually fail a test and that Barry did.

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2 hours ago, Death From Above said:

I will never understand the narrative behind Ortiz, drug cheat, being good and everyone else being bad. In no universe do I vote Ortiz ahead of A-Rod never mind Bonds.

because it's never really been about steroids, but about Bonds, Clemens, and A-Rod being dicks to the media, while Ortiz was super friendly to them.

[the super introverted McGwire was also infamously uncooperative.]

it's the BBWAA being marks for themselves as gatekeepers whose ring must be kissed.

just like when their predecessors used to job Ted Williams [another guy unfairly branded as a "jerk" for not being fast an easy for the sportswriters while the actual assholism of DiMaggio got ignored because he was sportswriter-friendly while playing] out of MVP awards in the 40s.

 

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"we're the guardians of the integrity of the Hall Of Fame" sounds a lot better than "we're a bunch of petty, vindictive little bitches nursing the sort of grudge we should've outgrown after high school"

Edited by BobbyWhioux
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all Hall Of Fame voting circles are cliquish gatekeepers like this, of course, but baseball is way more sanctimonious about it than the rest (major lol at the "character clause"), and the one that most pats itself on the back for being exclusionary.  Football, Hockey, and Basketball are all mostly fine with being Halls Of The Very Good.  But baseball revels in being like a country club where a major selling point is who isn't allowed to join.

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8 minutes ago, BobbyWhioux said:

all Hall Of Fame voting circles are cliquish gatekeepers like this, of course, but baseball is way more sanctimonious about it than the rest (major lol at the "character clause"), and the one that most pats itself on the back for being exclusionary.  Football, Hockey, and Basketball are all mostly fine with being Halls Of The Very Good.  But baseball revels in being like a country club where a major selling point is who isn't allowed to join.

Oh no - I am not giving football a pass after the decades of "only people who Dr. Z liked" got it

I still remember the uproar when Dr Z tried to say Lawrence Taylor shouldn't go in

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1 minute ago, RIPPA said:

Oh no - I am not giving football a pass after the decades of "only people who Dr. Z liked" got it

I still remember the uproar when Dr Z tried to say Lawrence Taylor shouldn't go in

hopefully Kenny Stabler's shade is doing some Ric Flair style strutting and WOOing in the face of Dr. Z's shade somewhere in the Everafter

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I don't think I really have the words to describe what big game Jon brought to the Cubs. Without him, the Cubs don't win a World Series. He was probably my favorite Cubs pitcher since Greg Maddux. I still remember what I was doing when his signing was announced. Some friends and I have a Google Hangout where we're all hardcore and lifelong Cubs fans and 7 or 8 of us were probably up until way, way, way, way late in the morning following along with whatever would get leaked out on Twitter, refreshing ESPN and other Cubs blogs, etc. First it looked like he wasn't going to sign, then it was taking so long that we thought he for sure wasn't going to sign, and when it finally got announced we went nuts. At the time, it felt like the key to finally getting to a championship.

Then we would have "fun" with his outings, like how he'd get himself into a hole in the 1st or 2nd inning and get out of that hole most of the time, not being able to throw to first, trying to throw to first and running to first instead, and really sucking at the plate. There was beast mode Jon who would record an out and suddenly it would look like a roaring bear was marching off the mound. There were the times Jon actually made a really bad throw to first, but he actually made the throw, and he'd give this wink as if to say, "see, I can do this!" Then you'd see the videos of Jon and other Cubs going out to concerts and getting up on stage with Eddie Vedder or whoever. He always looked like someone who always have a handle of Jack Daniels on him and was down to have fun even though during the game he'd be more Captain Serious than Jonathan Toews with the Blackhawks.

It's also hard to think of Lester without thinking of David Ross. I really didn't like Ross at first, but he really grew on me over time. That 2016 season really felt like he would do everything to get that team to the World Series. I remember sitting with my wife during game 7 and saying to her, "here we go, there's no way Ross is going to let this team lose, he's going to hit a homer in his final at bat." Ross wasn't a power hitter in the least, but he did what I thought he would do. He cranked one to nearly the same spot that Fowler hit a lead off dong to.

I have no bad memories of Lester with the Cubs. He was always a baller and I hope he enjoys retirement.

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Is the guy that first came up with a juiced ball in the HOF?
Asking for a friend.

The HOF debates have played a part in my ambivalence toward the game for the past few decades.

I'm with @Infinit, let them all in.

Still waiting for MLB to give the fans refunds for all the money it made when Sosa and McGwire were lighting up the charts in 1998.

MLB, and the sportswriters, didn't seem too concerned with integrity when that sweet cash was flowing.

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The Orioles are adjusting the dimensions of Camden Yards

Specifically they are moving the left field fence back 30 feet and raising the wall to 12 feet (it is currently 7 feet)

Part of the reason...

Quote

Camden Yards has allowed the most home runs (5911) of any ballpark in the majors since OPACY first opened in 1992.  While obviously many new stadiums have since opened and don’t have the 30 years of compiled history, any number of metrics or just plain naked-eye measurements leave no doubt that Camden Yards is one of baseball’s more hitter-friendly venues.

The oft-struggling state of the Orioles’ pitching staff has naturally played a role in those numbers, though it can certainly be argued that Baltimore pitchers might have had better numbers if right-handed batters had more of a challenge in reaching the seats on fly balls to left field.  “While Camden Yards will remain a hitters’ park, the hope is for the changes to prevent it from being an outlier in terms of home runs,” 

Note - OPACY equals "Orioles Park at Camden Yards"

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3 hours ago, Infinit said:

I'm over this HOF nonsense. Let them all in. Players have been using PEDs forever. 

I'm with you. There was a point when I was younger and believed there would be positive change from keeping them out. I'm older now and it doesn't fucking matter. Just let them in. The HoF is fucking dumb anyway.

Who was it that let people choose who he voted for or something to that effect? Lebetard?

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