For only the eighth time ever and the first time since 1996, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America elected no one to the Baseball Hall of Fame. And it’s a travesty.

As the baseball writers submitted ballots last month, Jon Alba, one of my campus media colleagues from Quinnipiac made a thought-provoking statement. As people debated on his Twitter feed – myself included – he stated that the game itself is “built on lies.”

For instance, when you ask most people who invented the game of baseball, even reputed scholars will say that it was mythical figure Abner Doubleday. In fact, it was Alexander Cartwright back in 1848 who first thought of the concept of having nine men on the diamond.  Tactics that involved pitchers altering the baseball using spit, Vaseline, and even thumbtacks is simply noted as a rough period in the live ball era.  Anyone in that era who didn’t know about such actions simply wasn’t paying attention.

With this empty class vote, writers who didn’t care to ask questions, former players who watched their teammates juice up day in and day out, and front offices that looked the other way want to invent a morality clause to be inducted to Cooperstown for this era.

Seriously?

Even with the BALCO scandal unfolding in the early 2000′s, baseball as a whole was content to have muscularly bloated superstars smack majestic 450 foot bombs so long as nobody asked any questions.  Pitchers who couldn’t scratch 85 miles per-hour with a nail on a clay wall could suddenly throw 96 mph with movement and the Players’ Association sold it to the public as the product of early development and intense lifting programs.  Yet to protect the “integrity” and “sanctity” of Cooperstown, even a hint of suspicion keeps out players like Mike Piazza, a 12-time All-Star catcher, and Jeff Bagwell, a .297 career hitter, both of which could very well be clean.

The same Hall of Fame that is too good for those in the Steroid Era houses a KKK member (Tris Speaker), a commissioner who fought the hardest against integration in the game (Kenesaw Mountain Landis), and one of the most notoriously dirty pitchers in history (Gaylord Perry). That doesn’t make sense to me either.

I don’t know how to fix it, but I do know this: it just isn’t right. The game should be ashamed.

The Steroid Era has been deemed a stain on the legacy we know as America’s Pastime. Thanks to a certain no-good jabroni and one report, the days that brought back relevancy to the sport are now observed at with a stained lens. Names that captained the era were Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa.

This year, three of those previously mentioned (Bonds, Clemens, Sosa) are on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time. As expected, those who were accused aren’t doing so well with voting, and McGwire has been receiving minimal votes the past few years.

While these men cheated and didn’t follow the rules of baseball, I think anyone who stood out in this era should be let into the Hall of Fame.

Let’s start off with the first topic: Relevance. Before the Steroid Era, baseball was coming off a strike and losing multiple fans. They needed something to boost up fan attendance and in general just people who were interested. You’re telling me it wasn’t fun to watch Barry Bonds get intentionally walked with the bases loaded? Or McGwire’s chase to break the all-time home run record?

Growing up with this era, that’s what got me interested in baseball. Seeing David (Yankees) get beat by expansion teams (Diamondbacks, Marlins), ludicrous home run tallies, pitchers throwing so hard they were literally killing animals. It gave you something to aspire for and goals to achieve. Showing that anything was possible no matter who deemed it not to be.

What really puzzles me is that people who are in the Hall of Fame currently have done worse than just use steroids. Paul Molitor, (one of my favorite players) along with many other known 1980′s baseball stars, was busted for cocaine use. Sandy Koufax admitted he was sometimes high on drugs while pitching to not think of his tired arm. Ty Cobb was a racist. Hank Aaron used amphetamines one game. Babe Ruth never faced an African American pitcher. You’re brainwashed to not know these things unless you discover them yourself.

This is another thing that contributes to why steroid users come off as so bad: Media. You never had this back when baseball was building a cult. With social media outlets bashing every move a baseball purist or analyst makes, the writers who vote for the Hall became paranoid and decided it was deemed necessary to take it out on the Steroid Era. But how is that fair? Did McGwire ever hit his wife? Was Bonds ever overdosing on heroin? These people have clean slates off the field as well.

You have to realize these players were also in a neutral field. Mostly anyone who played during this time used these types of drugs to get better. This is similar with Lance Armstrong, since the Tour de France is more dirtier than a homeless man living on the streets of New York City.

But in realistic terms, how do steroids make you a better contact hitter? Sure, they make you bigger and give a better chance to swing the bat quicker, but that doesn’t enhance vision. In fact, some people lose that if they use too much of the drug.

We must face the reality that every generation of baseball players has had their “heroes” enhance their performance beyond human extents. Even with the current steroid bans, you’re still seeing people test positive for HGH (Human Growth Hormone) and finding new ways to get better. You’re never going to change cheaters, only the ways of cheating. They’ll always find new ways.

That’s why I find not letting the steroid users into the Hall of Fame interesting. Steroids were allowed during this time. There were no bans or punishments, but rather public shame. After their careers have ended and they were exposed, now you decide to ban them? This is asinine to me.

The argument I’m getting as to why these players should be banned are for being “bad influences.” Now that just grinds my gears, because Cooperstown is allowing one of the rudest baseball players in Jim Rice over a man who is publicly criticized in Roger Clemens yet he was acquitted of his charges. The way media brainwashes these children are a “bad influence,” but I’ll leave that banter for somewhere else.

Before I end my rant on this topic, I do want to express that not everyone in this era used steroids. The poster child for this is Derek Jeter. But the problem is thanks to this era, you have “experts” like Skip Bayless accusing him for using since his numbers have stayed consistent. We do have to live with anyone having a random good season and someone will point fingers and yell, “TEST HIM!”

Baseball is, was and always will be tainted. You can make movies about how a “Field of Dreams” will bring back legendary players, but even that tried to give the Black Sox scandal a good light to the public. To now realize the cheaters and ban them in this era where baseball was rejuvenated around the world is a questionable move. Ridding these historic pastimes that my generation grew up watching will only make others question the legitimacy of Major League Baseball even more and drive it into obscurity.

Well, big Jorge has finally hung up the pinstripes. As a New Jerseyan by way of Brooklyn, I saw Jorge Posada play in six World Series and hundreds of regular season contests as I grew up, and although I am a Mets fan at heart (full disclosure), I have a great deal of respect for the Puerto Rican catcher.

That said, will his Yankee mystique and handful of rings help him get in through the back door into Cooperstown, a la Phil Rizzuto? Or will he get the Bernie Williams treatment (who seems likely to never sniff the Hall of Fame)? I can’t tell you what the voters will be looking for when Posada’s case comes up, but I can tell you if the guy is deserving right now.

We’re gonna do this three ways. First is the “sniff test” – gauche,  I know, but this is my story, I can write what I want. It seems to me that there is a fairly standard “top 10” list of catchers in major league history, and that it goes something like this:

Yogi Berra

Johnny Bench

Mike Piazza

Gary Carter

Mickey Cochrane

Bill Dickey

Pudge Rodriguez

Carlton Fisk

Gabby Hartnett

Roy Campanella

*Ernie Lombardi (okay, had to have an honorable mention – Campy and Lombardi are too close to call).

That’s the order in which I would rank those catchers, but really, as long as Berra and Bench are one and two (or two and one), you can scramble the rest and you’d get no argument from me. These are nine HOFers and two more players (Piazza and Rodriguez) who will be in first ballot unless there’s a major steroid revelation/the voters collectively lose their minds. There are five other catchers who have made the Hall of Fame: three (Buck Ewing, Roger Bresnahan, and Josh Gibson) should not be compared to Posada because they played before the catcher position itself was calcified/played in the Negro Leagues and so can’t be compared to MLB players stat-wise; two more, the patient-hitting Rick Ferrell (whom Bill James pegged as the third-best catcher of his era, behind Cochrane and Dickey) and the defensive wizard Deadballer Ray Schalk, are excluded because, well, I had to draw the line somewhere.

The “sniff test” doesn’t put Jorge Posada within the top 10 – or top 11 – of major league catchers of all-time, which is a problem for him. The catchers in the Hall of Fame are an unusually strong bunch; compared to other positions, their “core” is both large and includes few fringe candidates who can be attacked by borderliners. Posada initially looks to be on the outside looking in. Let’s do a statistical comparison and see how he stacks up numerically.

Below is the composite career line of the top eleven catchers in MLB history as ranked above (batting average/OBP/Slugging – OPS+), and then Posada’s line.

Top-tier catcher: 291/360/479 – 124

Posada:                 273/374/474 – 121

So on the slash-line test, Posada comes out ahead in OBP – which any baseball stathead would tell you is the most important of the three slashes – but a tick behind in slugging and in the dust in BA. He’s also slightly behind in OPS+ – he’s a slightly worse hitter compared to his peers compared to what the average top-tier guy was. In general, the composite catcher resembles probably Roy Campanella most of all.

What if we include counting stats? Let’s look at hits, home runs, Wins Above Replacement Player (WAR), and Defensive WAR, ignoring for the moment the issues of era-differences and catcher-use evolution:

Top-tier catcher: 2009 hits; 288 HR; 56.75 WAR; 2.86 dWAR

Posada:                1664 hits; 275 HR; 44.7 WAR; -2.9 dWAR

Okay, so this tells us that compared to the median elite catcher (who now, come to think of it, looks a lot like Bill Dickey), Posada falls behind in every counting category. There is an explanation for this, however: remember that Posada was blocked initially by Joe Girardi, and didn’t become a full-time catcher until age 26. This easily could have put a large dent in his counting stats, and even somewhat eroded his rate ones (given it erases at least one year of the standard 25-32 prime). What is definitively established here, no matter how you shake it, is that Posada was a rather terrible defensive catcher, probably the worst top-level receiver besides Mike Piazza – and Piazza carried a much larger bat.

In fact, here’s an experiment. Let’s take Piazza’s numbers out of the equation, and see what happens.

Top-tier non-Piazza catcher: 289/358/473 – 122; 1998 hits, 275 home runs, 56.52 WAR, 3.98 dWAR

Posada:                                            273/374/474 – 121; 1664 hits; 275 home runs; 44.7 WAR; -2.9 dWAR

Wow. That actually makes a very sizable dent. Without the insane outlier that is Mike Piazza’s incredible hitting (and the insane outlier that is Mike Piazza’s horrific defense), Posada narrows the gap. The BA and OBP gaps remain similar, but without Piazza, the median elite catcher’s slugging suddenly falls below Posada’s level; his OPS+ becomes almost exactly the same; the median elite C’s home run total falls to match Posada’s total. The gap in WAR, which is significant, remains, and Posada’s terrible defense suddenly looks even worse in comparison, but Posada is holding his ground. From my view, he’s still a borderline-out candidate, but it’s closer than I thought.

Of course, in real life we can’t just cut out Piazza – a contemporary. So let’s try even further to help Posada’s case. In my view of the HOF, a player’s peak should be vital – if he dominated for a period, and dominated hard enough and long enough, that should overcome a lack of counting stats. Let’s take each of the above 12 players – the 11 elites, plus Posada – and look at each of their respective eight-year “peak stretches” – the best eight years of their careers. This way, we can see if Posada’s peak measures up well to the average peak of an elite HOFer (or HOF lock) – and if this measuring-up can overcome Posada’s poor D and his career shortfall in WAR (of the elite catchers I listed, only Lombardi with 39 and Campanella with 36.2 had less career WAR than Posada’s 44.7).

Top-Tier Catcher’s Peak Eight: 302/373/509 – 134; 1133 hits, 175 home runs, 38.1 WAR, 2.42 dWAR

Posada’s Peak Eight:                     283/389/492 – 130; 1097 hits, 183 home runs, 37.1 WAR, -0.7 dWAR.

Okay, so in the slash stats Posada is a bit ahead in OBP, a bit behind in BA and slugging, and 4 percent worse in comparison with peers. However, he also hit more home runs, and – despite his bad defense – had almost equivalent WAR to the median elite catcher. This is getting interesting.

You know what, just for poops and giggles, let’s take Piazza the Human Outlier out again.

Top-Tier Catcher’s Peak Eight (non-Piazza): 299/371/500 – 131; 1112 hits, 165 HR, 37.08 WAR, 2.88 dWAR

Posada’s Peak Eight:                                         283/389/492 – 130; 1097 hits, 183 HR, 37.1 WAR, -0.7 dWAR.

Well, look at that. Suddenly those slash lines – especially OPS+ – look darn even. And the home runs Posada hit blow the median elite catcher away. That pesky WAR, though didn’t change too much – according to this metric, Posada is even with the median elite 11 catcher, although miserably behind in defense, if you remove Mike Piazza.

But again: really, we can’t. We have to keep digging. And so tune in next time, when I compare Jorge Posada to his catching peers during his own decade, blow by blow, in an attempt to decide whether or not Jorge belongs among the immortals in Cooperstown.

The ballots are in, and all the 27 men on the Baseball Hall of Fame short list can do now is sit and hold their collective, Big League Chew-tainted breath.

We already know one of this year’s inductees, the great Cubbie third baseman Ron Santo. That said, each ballot can hold up to 10 votes for 10 different men, and the final composition of the 2012 class will be a mystery up until 3 p.m. today.

Of course, as any baseball fan knows, it is far more fun to argue who should be left standing than to argue who will. That’s where this article comes in: cutting through what the great Bill James once called the “politics of glory,” here are the four men who most deserve to be inducted in the Pro Baseball Hall of Fame.

Barry Larkin

Barry Larkin was not quite as great as some of his more ardent supporters would have you believe. Having said that, he was still pretty darn great.

Having spent all 19 seasons of his professional career (1986-2004) with the Cincinnati Reds organization, he’s known as a high-character guy who served as captain of the Reds with distinction. More saliently, the man was a monster with a bat in his hands, especially for a shortstop. He went to 12 All-Star games, won nine Silver Sluggers as the best-hitting shortstop in the National League, and won the NL MVP in 1995. That year, his Reds went all the way to the Championship Series.

That wasn’t even Larkin’s best year – that came in 1996, when he put up a .298/.410/.567 slash line as a shortstop while playing in 152 games. This may not seem too fantastic, but that’s because we’ve become spoiled with the Jeter/A-Rod/Tulo shortstop play of the late 90s/modern day. Back when Larkin played, a shortstop wasn’t supposed to be able to hit like Larkin did. He also played strong defense, winning three Gold Gloves.

His only real bugaboo as a player was injuries – in his 1995 MVP campaign he only played 131 games, and he missed significant time in eight of his pro seasons. These games lost left him short of some significant “counting” milestones, like 2,500 hits, 500 steals, and 200 homeruns, and additionally Larkin never led the league in any offensive category at all. Despite this, his overall and steady greatness and the impact he had on a moribund franchise (and really, his counting stats are just fine even with the lost time) make him an easy choice for enshrinement.

Jeff Bagwell

Now here is a man who could hit. In one of the very worst trades in MLB history, the Boston Red Sox sent Bags to the Houston Astros in exchange for relief pitcher Larry Anderson. Anderson pitched exactly 15 innings with the Sox; Bagwell spent 15 seasons in Houston, putting up a .297/.408/.540 career stat line, which is just insane. His career OPS+ (which measures OPS while weighing for various factors, with 100 being average) is 149 – that is, Bagwell was 49 percent better than the average hitter over his career. That’s substantial.

Bags also nailed 449 career homeruns, including three seasons with over 40, and hit 39 homeruns in 110 games in 1994. In that season, Bagwell won the MVP, with a slugging percentage at a Bondian .750 and an OPS+ of 213. That’s right – in the strike-shortened 1994, Bagwell was more than twice as good as the average MLB hitter. Wow.

He also won the Rookie of the Year award, led the MLB in doubles, RBIs, and walks in various seasons, and played above average defense at first base. He honestly could have won the MVP in 1996 and 1997 as well. In between 1993 and 2000, Bags averaged 35 homeruns a season and put up a composite .309/.428/.583 line. How can you NOT vote for this guy?

The answer is: he played in the 1990s, and as we all know now, nobody from that era is safe from steroid suspicion. Now, Bagwell has never been fingered as a user, but voters are still wary. To this writer, if you’re going to leave an unlinked-to-’roids Bagwell out, no big guy from the 90s will ever get in, and that’s sad for the clean ones. So Bagwell = in. Plus, take a look at his beard! You’ll be happy you did.

Edgar Martinez

Edgar Martinez is the best pure hitter not in the Hall of Fame. There, I said it. A large chunk of Edgar’s career was played in Safeco Field, one of the very toughest of major league ballparks to hit in. A third baseman, he tore his hamstring apart in a freak injury just before the 1993 season, missed a huge amount of the year, and was so injured that he had to move full-time to designated hitter. And the whole time, he just kept raking.

In 19 Mariners seasons he won two batting titles, led the league in OBP three times, and had a career line of .312/.418/.515. OPS+ of 147. 309 career homers. And look at his age 32-38 seasons, after positional issues and various injuries that had bedeviled the late bloomer (only entered the league at age 27, thanks to established vet Jim Presley blocking him) finally cleared up: .329/.446./.574. 163 OPS+, average of 28 homers a year. You know who hit like that? Joe DiMaggio hit like that, and I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.

The guy has an award for hitting named after him – and it was named after him while he was still playing! There is no way a hitter of that caliber should not be in the HOF. But he’s not – because he played the DH position, and many voters think that this makes him only half a player.

This is poor logic. First, Edgar’s not David Ortiz – Martinez USED to be a (albeit mediocre) third baseman, before injury forced him out. If Edgar had played his career as a meh-fielding, Godly-hitting third sacker, he’d be a worse-fielding, better-hitting Wade Boggs, and he’d have been in first-ballot. Second, if voters think DHs shouldn’t be in – why is Paul Molitor, who was a dramatically worse hitter than Edgar, in the Hall of Fame? And will voters really tell Frank Thomas and Jim Thome that nope, they’re DHs, not allowed in, in a few years? Of course not – and if they’re in, Martinez has to be in first. He’s the first, and greatest, of them all.

Tim Raines

“Who’s Tim Raines?” is what none of you (as intelligent SportsFullCircle readers) are thinking.

But as a refresher: Tim Raines was the second-greatest leadoff hitter in baseball since World War II. But because the first-greatest leadoff man since WWII was Rickey Henderson, and Henderson overshadowed Raines in everything he did, poor Tim has been forgotten.

Well, not today. We all know a good leadoff man changes a baseball team for the better – that’s why Jose Reyes makes so much money – but it wasn’t until Raines and Rickey came along that baseball men realized that a good eye, not just tons of speed, made a good leadoff guy. Fortunately for his employers (notably the Montreal Expos), Raines was fast AND a great hitter. He stole an astonishing 808 bases in his career, converting 84 percent of his attempts. Those 808 steals are fifth all-time, and while Henderson stole 600 more than Raines, his success percentage was only 81 percent. Raines also lead the league in steals for four consecutive years – including one year in which he stole 71 bases in just 88 games.

But Raines was more than just wheels – he won a batting title in 1986, rapped 2,605 hits in 23 seasons, smacked over 400 doubles, and had a career .385 OBP. This is a rather high number for a career, and Raines’s skills at getting on base to lead off a game were enormously helpful for his Expos. They made Raines a unique talent, as well as a considerable one, in a decade (the 80s) which was still trying to feel leadoff play out. If Raines had not been so overshadowed by Henderson, he’d be seen more for what he was: a vital link in between Lou Brock and Ichiro Suzuki, and their respective styles of leadoff play. And let’s be honest: Tim Raines was eons better at playing leadoff than Lou Brock…was better than Pete Rose…was better than Paul Molitor…was better than Craig Biggio…and these are HOFers/future HOFers/would-be HOFers if not for gambling issues.

His cons include his mediocre defensive play and his lack of general power, but again – for what Tim Raines did, which was getting on base and making things happen, he was both a pioneer and a tremendously skilled one. For this, he should be remembered, not left in Rickey Henderson’s shadow.

One more thing: the guy’s nickname was “Rock,” because he played with vials of cocaine in his pocket. Keepin’ it classy, Baseball Hall of Fame – for now, and for always.

The all time stolen bases leader Rickey Henderson has just slid his way into Cooperstown. Henderson received 94.8 % of the votes from the baseball writers to get in. Henderson stole an amazing 1,406 stolen bases in his illustrious career in which he played for the Oakland Athletics, New York Yankees, San Diego Padres, Boston Red Sox,  Toronto Blue Jays, Anaheim Angels, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Henderson will be enshirined on July 26, 2009 with Jim Rice and Joe Gordon.