One man?s Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

Years from now ? shoot, one year from now ? we?ll look back at this 2012 Baseball Hall of Fame election and regard it as the calm before the storm.

Because next year, we?ll welcome Barry Bonds, Roger

Clemens, Mike

Piazza, Curt Schilling and Sammy Sosa to the Cooperstown conversation. Good Lord. As Bill Murray

said in ?Ghostbusters?: ?Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together ... mass hysteria!?

Having written that, every ballot generates a great amount of chatter on the yakosphere, and we?re sure to have some fierce debates today, when we learn whether anyone received the required 75 percent of the Baseball Writers Association of America voting.

(For what it?s worth, my bet is that only Barry Larkin makes the cut.)

I?ll list and explain my ballot alphabetically:

1) Jeff Bagwell. One of the dominant hitters of his time. Did he use illegal performance-enhancing drugs? First of all, there?s no tangible evidence. Second of all, I don?t care.

Until 2004, there were no collectively bargained rules covering steroids and such. My job as a voter is to recognize the laws that existed, not enforce retroactive, selective jurisprudence.

2) Larkin. He and Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith were the NL?s top shortstops of the 1980s and 1990s, with Larkin?s package featuring more offense and less defense than The Wizard of Oz?s.

3) Edgar Martinez. The Mariners? ultra-respected slugger was such a magnificent hitter that he should overcome his lack of defensive contributions.

4) Mark McGwire. His home runs (583) and on-base percentage (.394) qualify him, outside of his extracurricular activities. As for his confessed illegal PED usage, as with Bagwell, it?s not relevant. It isn?t my responsibility to ?protect? the ?clean? players from what occurred.

5) Rafael Palmeiro. Palmeiro differs from McGwire because he failed a test for illegal PEDs. In 2005, he made a decision with potential consequences, consequences that his union negotiated.

For my evaluative purposes, this transgression is damaging but not disqualifying. I have room for him on my ballot this year. I didn?t last year, and I might not next year.

6) Tim Raines. His sharing of an era with Rickey Henderson, perhaps baseball?s all-time best leadoff hitter, has unfairly diminished the Raines love. He followed a dominant start to his career with a productive second half, putting him over the top.

7) Alan Trammell. The Tigers shortstop doesn?t get the same support as contemporaries Cal Ripken Jr. and Robin Yount because he didn?t reach the magical 3,000-hit mark. But Trammell enjoyed enough highs in his run to merit inclusion.

8) Larry Walker. Undoubtedly, spending so much time at hitter-friendly Coors Field helped inflate the outfielder?s numbers. Yet even when you normalize his numbers to account for the ballpark?s help, Walker still looks excellent.

Source: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2012/jan/09/one-mans-baseball-hall-fame-ballot/

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