Awful Writer Turns In Awful Hall Of Fame Ballot

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — A former major league beat writer submitted a remarkably stupid Hall of Fame ballot yesterday, according to sources at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

“He just wrote ‘STEROIDS’ in the margin next to everyone’s name, then put a check mark next to Jack Morris,” said a Hall insider on the condition of anonymity.

Though the voter in question hasn’t covered or attended a baseball game since the Ford administration, as a member in good standing of the Baseball Writers Association of America, he still retains a Hall of Fame vote.

“You have to remember, these [BBWAA] guys are like federal judges,” a former Hall employee explained. “You can’t get rid of them.”

In addition to his Morris vote, Hall of Fame officials were surprised to discover a rambling, barely-decipherable screed written on the back of the veteran scribe’s ballot. Decrying “the sorry state of the modern game” and “Billy Beane-ism,” the elector laid into “so-called ballplayers who like to stick needles in each other’s butts.”

“Hitting way up high makes you a cheater, too,” he noted, perhaps in reference to Larry Walker, who played the bulk of his career in the thin air of Colorado.

Unusual ballots are par for the course, according to one Hall administrator. “Some guys will vote for Pete Rose as a write-in one year, but not the next. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”

“You know, it’s bad enough we stuck the museum in this godforsaken town, thousands of miles from civilization, for some idiotic reason lost to history,” he observed. “So we need to induct great players like Tim Raines and Jeff Bagwell to keep people coming. But we let this crazy persons guild decide who’s in and who’s out.”

“It was a gigantic mistake that will eventually lead to our total ruin,” he added.

Hall of Fame weekend is July 21-22.