The robots are coming, surely, and maybe not a moment too soon, because between college football and the Baseball Hall of Fame, the human voters can’t seem to get things right. On Wednesday, the Baseball Writers Association of America elected Andre Dawson into Cooperstown. And that was it. No Roberto Alomar (career OPS+ of 116, over 2700 hits, over 200 home runs, 10-time Gold Glove award winner and one spitting incident). No Barry Larkin (116 OPS+, over 2300 hits, career .815 OPS, three Gold Gloves and nine Silver Sluggers). And no David Segui (yes, he really got one vote).
Amazin’ Avenue: BBWAA Embarrasses Itself. Again.
Amazin’ Avenue has the breakdown of the voting, and offers their reaction (note: if you’re a member of the BBWAA, you may want to avert your eyes).
Andre Dawson gets the call, while superior position players like Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Roberto Alomar, and Mark McGwire (not to mention a DH in Edgar Martinez) fell short -- in some cases well short -- of the 405 votes required for enshrinement. Blyleven fell five votes short; Alomar fell eight votes short.
None of this is surprising, of course. The failure of the BBWAA to recognize the value of actual performance while masking their own smug ignorance -- and in some cases bitter intransigence -- behind the blustery veil of tired rhetoric and logic fallacies never ceases to amaze me.
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