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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Shame on the baseball writers


If an avowed racist like Ty Cobb is in baseball's Hall of Fame, how can baseball writers exlude Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens?

At least this time the Dallas Morning News sportswriters got it right. All three who are eligible to cast ballots for major league baseball’s Hall of Fame — Evan Grant, Tim Cowlishaw and Gerry Fraley — cast votes for Barry Bonds, the all-time home run leader, and Roger Clemens, who won more Cy Youngs than any other pitcher in history, to be inducted. However, too many sanctimonious, self-serving jerks who also cast ballots left them off so they will not be inducted, at least this time around.

Why? Because these idiot writers think they know more than they do. Plus they are two-faced hypocrites.

They previously voted in Ty Cobb, whose avowed racism led him to be charged with attempted murder. Plus he and Tris Speaker (many researchers have written both were members of the Ku Klux Klan) were implicated in a game-fixing scheme. Chicago Cubs first baseman Cap Anson, voted into the hall in 1939, refused to play if the opposing team’s roster included black players. Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, also voted into the hall in 1939, had black Baltimore Orioles infielder Charlie Grant thrown out of the major leagues when Comiskey revealed Grant was black and not a Cherokee Indian as he had claimed.

The hall is full of acknowledged drunks. Manager Casey Stengel said right fielder Paul Waner (1952 inductee) was so graceful "he could slide into second base without breaking the bottle in his hip pocket." Team owner Bill Veeck claimed legendary pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (1938 inductee) pitched much better drunk than sober. Chicago sportswriter Mike Royko wrote Hack Wilson (inducted 1979) should be moved from the outfield to first base "because he wouldn’t have as far to stagger to the dugout."

Gaylord Perry (inducted 1991) repeatedly broke baseball rules by doctoring baseballs with spit, Vaseline and other stuff.

Orlando Cepeda (inducted 1999) served 10 months in prison in 1975 for smuggling marijuana into Puerto Rico.

Paul Molitor (inducted 2004) admitted using illegal recreational drugs and Wade Boggs (inducted 2005) confessed to Barbara Walters he was a sex addict. Duke Snider (1980) repeatedly failed to pay his income taxes.

Robert W. Cohen said it best in his book Baseball Hall of Fame — or Hall of Shame: "In theory, when it comes to these kind of votes, it’s true character should matter, but once you’ve included Ty Cobb, how can you exclude anyone else?"

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