How to react to the 2015 Hall of Fame class

The Hall of Fame results are in! Oh, it’s like Christmas morning, and every other package is filled with socks. There are some rad toys, though, things you asked for. It’s pleasant and horrible at the same time. Memories are recounted; players are celebrated; teeth are gnashed; complaints are filed; specific, unnamed websites crash; cars are set on fire; the president calls in the National Guard. There’s nothing like Hall of Fame day.

Before skipping straight to the carnage, though, let’s have some order. I have a preferred timeline of how to react to the Hall of Fame announcement, which I would like to share with you now. It’s too easy to get lost on a side street, a tangent, and forget what the whole thing is about. A set schedule helps me out.

It’s always a sound idea to spend a few minutes after the Hall of Fame announcement to focus on the players who did get in. It’s good for the heart. Four players were elected. All four were worthy. Let us celebrate them!

In 50 years, there will be people who will answer “Pedro Martinez” as the player they would travel back in time to watch. In five seconds, one of those people might be me. Just give me one more Pedro game, give me one more dominant Pedro game. He was the perfect pitcher, someone who compares well with the best years of Bob Gibson’s career before you adjust the numbers for era.

It’s possible that no one had better raw stuff in his day, but Martinez will always remind me of what a pitcher with nearly perfect command could do, even more than Greg Maddux. No sport can compare with baseball when it comes to one great player making another great player look like an amateur. It’s the head-to-head competition, heavily slanted toward the pitcher’s favor, that does it. And no pitcher in my lifetime did it quite as beautifully and artfully as Pedro.

Randy Johnson comes close, though. Catch me on a different day, and I can write the same things about Johnson. His four-season stretch of Cy Young seasons was absurd. There were 128 National League Cy Young ballots cast from 1999 through 2002, and only 24 didn’t have Johnson in first place, most of those coming in 1999 (because of Mike Hampton, naturally). Johnson was the hard-throwing anomaly who made John Kruk turn his batting helmet around, a dazzling spectacle. He also had the strangest career arc of possibly any Hall of Famer, and he’ll be the patron saint of “If he could only throw strikes ...” prospects from now until the end of the sport. Johnson walked 416 batters in 631 innings after turning 26. Then he learned to throw strikes when he was 29. Now we’re here, talking about his Hall of Fame induction.

Craig Biggio was one of the most well-rounded players in baseball history, a speed and power combination stuck in the middle of the diamond. Boy, how I wanted to set that stupid body armor of his on fire when he played against the Giants and stuck his elbow out intentionally. Boy, what an annoying, horrible creature of the night he was. Which is the point of Craig Biggio. He was supposed to be annoying, supposed to be burying your team at every opportunity, supposed to make you envious and irate at the same time. It wasn’t just about the counting stats, though they helped. He was one of the greatest second basemen in baseball history and one of the sport’s greatest pests.

John Smoltz can’t compare with Martinez or Johnson, but that’s like comparing Tim Raines to Rickey Henderson unfavorably. He had an unlikely, extended career that, except for 15 starts, all came with the same team, the same ridiculously fortunate team. When some 32-year-old flamethrowers have elbow surgery, they’re never heard from again. Smoltz came back, switched roles, was brilliant, switched back, was brilliant again. Someone look up the odds of a 33-year-old Tommy John survivor throwing 200 outstanding innings when he’s 40, this computer can’t handle it.

All four would have gotten my vote on every ballot they’ve ever appeared on. Thanks to them, baseball was much, much better.

This is an amusing, infuriating tradition. Armando Benitez got more Hall of Fame votes than Jimmy Wynn, you know. So did J.T. Snow. Dante Bichette got three votes. Who got weird votes in the 2015 class?

Percival had twice as many seasons with an ERA over 4.00 as Pedro Martinez, and three fewer full seasons with an ERA under 3.00. That’s not to besmirch Percival. That’s just to giggle about Martinez’s absurd career again. He was basically a nine-inning closer, but much, much better.

Tom Gordon will always be the best player who isn’t in the Hall, but is in the title of a Stephen King novel, at least until Oh, God, Bobby Grich Is in My Office With a Knife comes out in 2017, as scheduled. But if you’re looking for the easiest target for this section, go with Boone. His career WAR was 13.5, or five more wins over what Erstad had in 2000 alone. Who in the heck votes for Aaron Boone on a crowded ballot?

Jeff Bagwell was better than Biggio. That’s using almost every metric you can think of, even after adjusting for position. Bagwell was essentially Frank Thomas with speed. Except he played in a lousy hitter’s park for most of his career, doing it for a team that was a few years away from letting him rest as a DH. In a different era, he’s probably a first-ballot guy. As is, there’s suspicion because just look at him.

Guys who got that big during the ‘90s aren’t allowed into the Hall. No way, no how. I’ve studied this extensively. Just look at him. Aren’t you suspicious? Just look at him ... we’re talking about the guy on the left. Yeah, just look at him.

Smoltz was fantastic, but how is he a first-ballot Hall of Famer and Curt Schilling can’t crack 40 percent? Even using grandpa stats, it doesn’t make sense. Smoltz had 213 wins; Schilling had 216. Smoltz’s ERA was 3.33; Schilling’s was 3.46. Smoltz was a part of a legendary pitching trio; Schilling was a part of a legendary pitching duo. Smoltz was a part of one of the greatest World Series matchups ever; Schilling had the bloody sock. Is it the closing thing? The saves? Oh, come on. So if Schilling spent his last three years with the Phillies as a closer, he would have been better somehow?

You people are awful.

Almost as awful as the people who still aren’t voting for Tim Raines. They aren’t doing it because they can’t comprehend what it was like to watch a player steal 70 to 90 bases every year, occasionally leading the league in batting average, on-base percentage, doubles, or runs. That sort of player is a myth these days, a story pitchers tell their kids when they’re misbehaving.

Alan Trammell really isn’t going to make it. I’m just realizing this now. He was so good. So very good.

Why didn’t anyone scrawl “LOU WHITAKER” in blood on their ballot to make up for him dropping off the first ballot?

I think I hate the Hall of Fame.

Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were the best players of their generation. They were among the best players of any generation, with only folks like Babe Ruth and Cy Young coming up in statistical counterarguments. Bonds and Neifi Perez, paired at the hip like Whitaker and Trammell for their entire careers, would have been worth more than Derek Jeter and Johnny Bench, more than Reggie Jackson and Joe DiMaggio, more than Robin Yount and Pete Rose, more than Kirby Puckett, Jim Rice, and Orlando Cepeda. Which is a fancy way of saying that Bonds was that valuable all by himself.

You can play the same games with Clemens, too, who just barely missed having the same career value as three Sandy Koufax careers back-to-back-to-back. I didn’t watch him nearly as much as Bonds, but he was better than Johnson and Martinez, whom I lauded up there. He was much better. That’s a terrifying thought.

It’s not about the stats or the awards, though. It’s about the steroids. OK. I don’t even have enough energy to argue this point anymore. Tired of people bringing up Gaylord Perry and greenies and all that. Tired of people using the word “cheating” until they get all scrunchy in the face like Veruca Salt. They cheated. Got it. The Hall of Fame is a reward for good citizenship as much as it is a reward for good play, and it’s a museum with a wing that’s dedicated to forgetting certain eras of baseball history. Understood. Let’s all stop arguing about it.

Until next year.

I think I love the Hall of Fame. Help me.

Next year, Ken Griffey, Jr., Trevor Hoffman, and Jim Edmonds come on the ballot. It’s still crowded, but it’s manageable for another year. My hypothetical ballot:

Great. Except it still leaves off Edmonds, Jeff Kent, Gary Sheffield, Larry Walker, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa, all of whom I would vote for, along with players I’m conflicted about, like Hoffman and Fred McGriff. This logjam is still all jammed with logs, dammit.

In 2017, Vladimir Guerrero, Pudge Rodriguez, and Manny Ramirez come on the ballot. And one of these days, I’ll have to figure out an opinion on Bobby Abreu. This is still a mess. But it’s fun. I don’t know why. It’s horrible. It’s the worst. It’s obnoxious. It’s pointless.

But it’s fun. Hate you, Hall of Fame. Love you, Hall of Fame. Ask me again tomorrow.