



My first FanPost here, so bear with me.

You and I, at this time of year, likely have something in common. We read about the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and about all the names on that ballot. Despite controversy about PED users, and arguments pitting new stats vs. old stats, it all ends up working out about the same. Lots of debate, and one or two names are selected.

Frankly, I think it's getting a bit dull. The same debate, more or less every year, and then a couple of names pop up in January. The last time that as many as three players were inducted off of the 'regular' ballot (that's the one we all hear about and read over, and argue), was in 1999, when Brett, Yount and Ryan all were admitted. I'm a 'big hall' guy, I will admit that freely, and enshrining one or two guys per year is just, well ignorant. It ignores how good some players were, and how significant they were to the game.

So, since it seems like the writers would like to vote to keep players out of the Hall of Fame, that's exactly what I think we should let them do. Every vote on the ballot is a vote against the player. If a player gets, say, 40 percent of the vote, he drops off the ballot. Anybody who didn't get very many votes, gets carried over to the next year. After ten years, if you haven't dropped off the ballot, welcome to Cooperstown!

I have no idea if this will work. At all. This is where the unwashed, (and, possibly, well washed), masses at Bluebird Banter come in. I need somebody to be the BBWAA voters for this experiment to run, and you look to me to be the exact same demographic as the writers. You know what baseball is. You read about it and watch it. If you don't write about it, don't worry, many of the BBWAA members don't currently do that either. It's right here in the BBWAA website's FAQ section.

So, let's run us a ballot! I don't want to wait ten years to find out how well this might work, so I'm going to roll back the clock ten years. This link shows the Hall of Fame ballot as it looked 10 years ago.

Now it's your turn, tell SBNation which ten (or less) guys don't belong in Cooperstown, ever. Candidates are in alphabetical order. Once I have something resembling a results table, I'll update the ballot with all those eligible in 2004, and we'll see what happens!

Sadly SBNation polls will not allow more than one result per user, and that doesn't quite fit our format. I've had to post it at this external link.