Joe Posnanski’s latest post is brilliant. It’s about an imaginary “Willie Mays Hall of Fame” in which only the truly elite of the elite should be enshrined. Many people talk about such a thing, and today he envisions it. The post is long, and if you take it at face value you might get mad at the reasoning he uses in eliminating players from the platonic ideal of the Hall of Fame. But look deeper: he’s simply taking the reasoning of current Hall of Fame voters to its logical conclusion.
There are people who only want a small Hall of elite players. OK. There are some who vote now who want to keep out the cheaters. OK. Some won’t vote for guys on the first ballot. OK. Some won’t vote for guys who didn’t “feel” like Hall of Famers at the time. Others won’t vote for guys who are roughly comparable to players who aren’t already in. There are a dozen reasons for these kinds of votes. We’ve seen them all in the past few weeks alone.
Joe runs down the entire Hall of Fame roster and eliminates guys one by one who, if up for election today, wouldn’t be voted for by some people if they remained consistent with their currently-stated standards. At the end, he has a Hall of Fame on which everyone can agree. Read his post to see what it looks like. You can probably guess the size of its membership before you click through.
Joe is way too nice to say “F-You” to the Hall of Fame electorate in so many words. But in this brilliant passive-aggressive post he does so in 4000 words.