Lynn Henning, who's among the deans of Detroit sportswriting, unloads blunly Tuesday night about frustration with the Baseball Hall of Fame process he participates in.
"The Hall of Fame got bogged down again this year by bad habits it refuses to break," Henning writes in his Detroit News column.
Alan Trammell's also-ran status in his 14th year of consideration is part of a broader breakdown, in the eyes of a beat veteran who earned his Michigan State journalism degree back in 1974 (Al Kaline's last season).
People from Detroit are bitter because Trammell got only 25.9 percent of the vote this year. They have a case, as do the Lou Whitaker supporters, who lost him to a freakish 2001 vote in which he failed to get enough votes to hang on the ballot. . . .
Trammell on Tuesday suffered unnecessarily because of an antiquated 10-man limit [on each voting sportswriter's ballot]. Along with his old double-play partner, Whitaker, he likely will wait years for any shot at justice from the Veterans Committee, at which time both men conceivably could score.
But the Hall of Fame’s more immediate problem is wider and deeper than any gripes about Trammell or Whitaker. It’s about other deserving names who also were ignored in Tuesday’s vote, all because of an artificial 10-man barrier imposed long ago that no longer has relevance.
Lynn Henning: "If you make all ballots public, you gain ground in multiple and valuable ways."
(Photo from Fox 2 Detroit)
In addition to a higher cutoff, Henning pushes for an end to secret votes by members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
This should be routine. It should be welcomed by all parties. This isn't a vote on the first Tuesday of November for a political party. It isn't disclosing one's religious beliefs. . . .
If you make all ballots public, you gain ground in multiple and valuable ways:
You ensure a degree of accountability now impossible due to secrecy. When ballots can be studied and scrutinized, the membership earns at least a prize for transparency.
Secondly, you tend to get better votes. There is more research, more care taken in etching those Cooperstown check marks when you know they're being unveiled at the public square.
Full disclosure also helps reduce, to a human minimum, the number of personal, political or plain-crazy votes that can sully an otherwise conscientious election. . . .
Change the ballot, for the better, with a simple expansion. Then disclose the votes.
-- Alan Stamm
