Hall of Fame voters pitch a shutout as character questions muddle Cooperstown debate
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The National Baseball Hall of Fame voters, who hold the awesome power of bestowing immortality on the greatest players in the sport — or, if you prefer, who face the awful duty of determining how that power should be applied — pitched a collective shutout Tuesday, failing to send a single player to Cooperstown, N.Y.
On a day when luminaries such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling found out they would have to wait at least another year to gain induction to the hall — each fell short, for the ninth year in a row, of the 75 percent vote threshold required for election — the sole winner, such as it was, was the so-called “character” clause in the voting instructions that, more than statistics, decided this year’s outcome.
Schilling, a two-time strikeout champion and six-time all-star over a 20-year career, seemed poised to make the cut after slowly building support over the years among the 10-year members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who make up the electorate. However, Schilling, a vociferous right-wing provocateur and Twitter antagonist, appears to have been penalized by some voters for his political views and intolerance.
Schilling was named on 285 of the 401 ballots cast — or 71.1 percent — leaving him 16 votes shy of enshrinement, slightly better than his 70 percent showing of a year ago. He has one more chance next year before falling off the writers’ ballot.
As for Bonds and Clemens — the premier hitter and pitcher of their generation, if not of all time — both have unassailable statistical cases, but both continue to fall short of election because of their association with performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds was chosen on 61.8 percent of ballots, Clemens on 61.6 percent — both slightly up from a year ago but still more than 50 votes shy of making the cut, with one last chance for both next year.
This year’s shutout brings to a halt an unprecedented expansion of the rolls of Cooperstown, with the writers electing 22 players between 2014 and 2020 — the most new entrants to the Hall of Fame in any seven-year span since the writers began voting in 1936 — including four each in 2015, 2018 and 2019.
But this summer’s induction, should Hall of Fame officials permit it to go forward, would still see four people enshrined: Derek Jeter and Larry Walker , who were elected by the writers in January 2020, and Ted Simmons and former union chief Marvin Miller , who were elected by the Modern Baseball Era Committee in December 2019. All were due to be inducted in July 2020 until the ceremony was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Further down the ballot, a handful of candidates made strong leaps that positioned them to make the cut in the future. The largest gain was made by third baseman Scott Rolen, who went from 35.3 percent a year ago, his third year on the ballot, to 52.9 percent this time. Others who enjoyed big increases were reliever Billy Wagner (46.4 percent in his sixth year on the ballot), first baseman Todd Helton (44.9 percent in his third year) and slugger Gary Sheffield (40.6 percent in his seventh year).
Fourteen voters, the most in the history of the writers’ vote, cast blank ballots this year — either as a protest or to indicate they felt none of the 25 candidates on the ballot was worthy.
The Hall of Fame, in its instructions to voters, asks them to make their choices based on not only players’ record and ability but also their “integrity, sportsmanship [and] character” — words many voters have cited in refusing to choose steroid-tainted sluggers since the first of them, Mark McGwire in 2007 , began appearing on the ballot.
Schilling presented an altogether different calculus, with some voters acknowledging his career record — which includes 216 regular season wins, 3,116 strikeouts and a dazzling 11-2 record and 2.23 ERA in the postseason — was worthy of election but opting to leave him off their ballots because of his political views and social media behavior.
Schilling has endorsed the lynching of journalists and was fired by ESPN in 2016 for mocking transgender people . More recently, he has voiced support for the perpetrators of the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol . That was well after the deadline for voters to submit their ballots; however, in its wake at least one voter petitioned the Hall of Fame, unsuccessfully, to alter the ballot retroactively to a “no” vote for Schilling.
“Curt Schilling needs to know, or be reminded, there are consequences to what he says,” Mark Faller, sports editor of the Arizona Republic, wrote in a column last month explaining his “no” vote for Schilling. “ … If he ever deserved this honor, he lost it by his own words and actions. He does not deserve to be on that podium in July.”
Other voters have pointed out the hypocrisy of applying the character clause to Schilling, Bonds, Clemens and others when the rolls of Cooperstown already include various scoundrels, womanizers and racists — as well as, almost certainly, steroid users who did not get caught.
After years of steady gains among voters, Schilling’s candidacy appeared to reach a crucial benchmark a year ago, when he was named on 278 of 397 ballots cast — or 70 percent. In the history of the writers’ ballot, 20 of the 21 players who hit the 70 percent mark with additional years of eligibility eventually gained election. (The exception, Jim Bunning, would be voted in by the Veterans Committee.)
In a letter to the Hall of Fame that he shared on his Facebook page following the release of the vote totals Tuesday, Schilling defended his record, both as a pitcher and as a citizen, and accused the media of distorting his image for the public with “hit pieces” against him.
“My love of this country has always been worn on my sleeve,” he wrote. The writers who covered him as a player, he added, “KNOW what they are claiming is untrue yet they quote, re-quote and link to one another story after story that began as lies and grew into bigger ones.”
Schilling also wrote that he is “at peace” with the notion he will not get into Cooperstown via the writers’ ballot and asked that his name be withdrawn from next year’s ballot.
This year’s shutout could lend more ammunition to critics who say the writers are the wrong group to adjudicate debates over character and integrity, let alone decide whose career body of work was and wasn’t worthy of Cooperstown. Increasingly, those critics include many of the writers eligible to cast votes. (The Washington Post is among a handful of media outlets that do not permit their otherwise eligible employees to vote for the Hall of Fame.)
In recent years, a handful of prominent baseball writers, including Buster Olney and Jeff Passan of ESPN and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic, have decided to stop voting for the Hall of Fame or said they were considering stopping — out of frustration, as Rosenthal wrote , with “the inconsistencies we cannot avoid, the false equivalencies we create [and] the rationalizations that require leaps in logic.”
The period of reflection regarding the candidacies of Bonds, Clemens and Schilling is nearly expired, with all three facing a 10th and final year on the ballot.
But for anyone wishing the character debate would simply go away, there is bad news: Among the players who will appear for the first time on next year’s ballot are David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez, sluggers associated with steroids during their careers and whose candidacies all but ensure the character clause will be in play for at least another decade.
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I have no problem with keeping all three of these out of the baseball hall of fame. Schilling is borderline on merit to begin with.
The only person of this sort I would like to see put in the Hall Of Fame is Pete Rose. He is an old man and has paid his debt to baseball society.
He has been over-punished. I totally get the need to keep players away from gambling, but the Rose ban has been unnecessarily long. When you think that the policy dates to the Black Sox, with guys throwing the World Series, just try to imagine Rose throwing a game - even a meaningless one. I never saw anybody play as hard to win as that guy.
He hasn't handled it well, and that's entirely his fault, but at some point, the punishment needs to fit the crime. We are way past that now.
And this was true before they started taking steroids. That's what makes this such a tragedy. Bonds, in particular, was the best all-around player of his generation - a 400 homer, 400 steals man, who had won three MVPs before he even started on the steroids. Same for Clemens. He had won at least three Cy Young awards before steroids, including three 20-win seasons. If either of these guys had just retired in 1997 instead of hitting steroids, they would already have been inducted to the Hall.
This is a terrible reason to leave someone out. If you think his record warrants entry, and you don't think he cheated, then he should go in. Ballplayers have all sorts of worldviews. Schilling gets dinged because he's more vocal about his? That's lame.
The most persuasive statistical argument for Curt Schilling is his playoff appearances for the Boston Red Sox. If those playoff appearances had been for the San Diego Padres or the Pittsburgh Pirates , and not the Red Sox (who are darlings of east coast media) I doubt people would think he is so deserving of the Hall Of Fame. Schilling pitched for 20 years and never won the Cy Young Award. Of the 10 pitchers , historically, that the site baseball-reference.com says are the most similar statistically to Schilling, only one of them , John Smoltz, is in the Hall Of Fame. 64 of the 76 pitchers that are in the Hall Of Fame now have better career ERA's than Schilling.
I'm not sure he deserves it even without all the conspiracy stuff.
Yeah, I mean I hate to jump on the "East Coast Bias" bandwagon - or the Big City Bias, for that matter - but that really is a thing. Everything that happens in Boston or New York is automatically about 40% more significant than if the same thing happened elsewhere.
Most of Schilling's career was mediocre. He had a few strong years - toward the end of his career, which I find suspicious. So, I'm not convinced the guy played clean anyway, in spite of him being a critic of users. After talking it up, he tried to downplay it and retract his statements in front of Congress. That was weird.