Especially if you are a Mets fan.
The Hall process is flawed. It is great to hold players to a high bar, it should be the Hall of Fame, for players that are above great, not just the very good.
For example, as much as I love Carlos Delgado, he won’t be in the hall of fame. He is very good. Not one of the greatest of all time.
But over the last couple of years, my favor for the hall of fame has wavered, especially when Ballot Holders like Rob Parker who called Piazza a very good player, not a great. He later went on to say that a benchmark for players is to hit 500 homers. The automatic retort to this would be that it is so much more difficult for catchers to hit that benchmark. They are often injured, have to take more off-days than their counterpart and really get beat up throughout the season. The contract that Russel Martin got this off-season is a great example of this. He is a career .259 hitter, had a .290 season last year and has 119 HR in his career. He got an 80+ million dollar contract from the Blue Jays this year because offense is so difficult to find as a catcher.
Piazza, Bench, Berra cannot be held to the same standards as outfielders or first basemen in terms of offense.
In 10-15 years, we are going to have another situation like catchers (and shortstops) for pitchers. More and more relievers are going to start cropping up into the Hall of Fame area. The magic numbers will not work for arms out of the pen, just like how most bat magic numbers don’t work for catchers.
In defense of Rob Parker, he also brings up another area of reform for the vote. He explains in order to get a vote, you need to cover baseball for 10 consecutive seasons. That’s incredibly tough and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand baseball. Adding to that, in the age of the internet, what does it mean to cover a baseball team? I’m not arguing for a ballot for myself (although I’ve been doing this around 7 years) but someone like Matt Cerrone. Does he ever get a vote? He’s baseball intelligent!
Rob Parker also brings up another key point, there are only 10 African Americans with votes. This is an argument about institutionalized racism as well. It isn’t an overt, “you’re black so you don’t get a vote” but that is only type of racism. Institutionalized, systematic racism works within the systems that have been built over time. To get a vote, a writer needs to be a long time writer covering baseball in a position that is historically white and male. The diversity within the Hall of Fame voting block is not at all an accurate representation of America, and while baseball at times can be progressive, the voting block demographic and how you become a member can keep regressive thoughts in place.
I don’t how to reform the hall, but a conversation needs to come up to talk about these points.
