“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.” — Jonathan Edwards

This is from a sermon given, once upon a time, by an asshole.

Edwards was a Puritan New Englander, who gained fame and power during the 18th century by appealing to colonial rubes who bought his impassioned fear-mongering hook, line, and sinker. Some have counterargued that Edwards spoke in Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God of a God who loves us because he didn’t drop us into the fire. (Great, so he’s merely been torturing us ever since?) Notwithstanding the fact that the brimstoners of the day considered Edwards something of a liberal, he actually also was a reprehensible sexist and unrepentant slave owner.

Had he lived a few centuries later, perhaps, Edwards might have made one hell of a baseball writer.

Like Edwards’ God, the Baseball Writers Association of America loves to dangle things. They dangle the fates of our childhood heroes over their agenda-fueled fire. They dangle their schizophrenic ballots before us like some deranged lottery prize. And, when it’s all said and done, they laugh and sermonize about why they’ve done what they’ve done.

With writers playing Gods of baseball immortality, it stands to reason that they view the annual closure of the process as an opportunity to pen a navel-gazing “Here’s How I’m Determining The Fates Of Many” piece. And this goes for even the most progressive of voters. If you take a second to think about it, subjecting those who played the highest level of baseball better than the vast majority ever to take the field — anyone qualified to even have his name on the Hall of Fame ballot in the first place certainly did so — to a repeated and subjective gauntlet of “good enough?” is unfair, at best. The entire structure assumes that patrons of a museum will walk around and say, “Yes, this is exactly the correct amount of ‘greatest people ever to play baseball.’ Thank you, writers.”

Edwards, no doubt, would have been that salty, surly, status quo kind of sportswriter; the kind who proudly announces that s/he will never vote any man suspected of using performance enhancing drugs into Cooperstown. “Those sinners have forever tainted our beautiful game, the last bastion of purity in an otherwise forsaken world,” he might say.

We know baseball players cheated. But for guys like Edwards, they didn’t just cheat, they chose glory and millions of dollars over the media’s subjective narrative virtue. They cheated the sports writers! It was the sports writers who loved those same players, who trusted those same players. It was the sports writers who made the athletes in their images and column inches!

In truth, how many of the forsaken writers exclude the cheaters because they love us? Surely, they doth protest because it’s better for us that they do, right. After all, no baseball sermon is complete without some attention paid to how the sins of the players are as much the sins of the fans. Just a little too much, we enjoyed watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa loudly perk up a nation’s dipping interest in a struggling game. All while Bud Selig — the pudwhack argued as the game’s greatest commissioner ever (mostly by process of elimination of the eight awful or irrelevant men that have been in charge before him) — quietly condoned the lab experiments of his era.

But it was us, the fans, who lied to ourselves about the obvious changes in players’ bodies. We lied because we were weak. Baseball is meant to be appreciated, not enjoyed, you damn heathens. No sex, drugs, and rock and roll allowed in this game. It’s the National Anthem performed by fucking Creed before a commercial for some erectile dysfunction dangle-fixing pill.

And now comes the inevitable reckoning for the joyful days of Sodom, Gomorrah, and chicks digging the long ball™. Give ye thine ears to these orations on heavenly wrath of sanctity of sport.

Paul Daugherty, preach, brother!

“I don’t vote for any I suspected of using PEDs. Lots argue that since we really don’t know who did and who didn’t, and that guys like Sosa and McGwire used before it was against the agreed-upon rules, it shouldn’t be held against them. They make a good case […] I don’t care. I will never vote for Mac, Sosa, Palmeiro, Bonds, Clemens and A-Rod.”

But Daughtery is hardly the only visiting preacher in the congregation today. Steve Simmons, bring us down your frosty chill of truth from Canada!

And the Lord proclaimeth, “When ye cannot refute a logical argument ye must assuredly rise up and… just… be a brat about it?” Chris Haft, testify!

“Right, I voted for two suspected PED users (Bagwell, Piazza) and omitted two others (Bonds, Clemens). All I can say is I saw enough of Bagwell and Piazza to believe they were legit.”

Justice is blind, but God sees everything. Carrie Muskat, my sister, what say ye?

“I also have voted for Bonds and Clemens but done so reluctantly. No more. Conversations with other HOF players have convinced me.”

The prodigal vote is a parable for us all. Marty Noble, you noble son of a gun, you’re here, right? Hit us with some backwoods gibberish!

“For the second year in a row, no need to study the ballot existed. I voted for the three no-brainer candidates — Johnson, Martinez and Smoltz. I never picked up a book or clicked on a website …”

In his first-ever Colbert Report, Stephen said “I don’t trust books. They’re all fact; no heart.” Marty Noble would have smiled and nodded at that statement — but he straight missed it, he was too busy trying to figure out when and why the talking picture box stopped playing Matlock.

Of course, our hero Edwards also preached against the reading of what he deemed “immoral books.” Can you imagine what he would have said about Moneyball? “Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe, really? I mean, he’s a fantastic actor, but really?”

Satan can cite Fangraphs for his purpose, moms and dads; hence the need for parental filters on those advanced analytics websites. In fact, ban the internet altogether until your children are married. The internet is where the devil hides in the form of way more progressive thinking and voting.

“Licentious and immoral practices seem to get great head amongst young people,” Edwards once observed. Ironically, he was unaware ignorant of future innuendo.

But there’s a problem in baseball that runs deeper than these braying morons. I speak, of course, of the simple-minded herd of puritans who parrot their half-baked talking points. Your uncle, who calls Roger Clemens a fraud as the former fireballer’s face appears flashes on a flatscreen TV that was won at a Super Bowl party raffle down at the lodge and that is hooked up to “borrowed” cable. Your buddy who thinks Piazza “was an awesome hitter but … ya know … that rumor … can’t have that kind of thing in the Hall, right, man? No, like, I don’t have problem with it, but, like … whatever, forget it.” The pearl-clutching ninny who adamantly believes Barry Bonds’ surliness and probable steroid use takes away from Babe Ruth’s sheer talent against inferior pitching and his gonorrhea.

Cheating in sports is fine. It’s always been fine; hell, it’s tacitly encouraged by all who want their favorite team to win, even on baseball’s hallowed grounds. The game has thrived on scuffs and spit and I don’t want to know what else has been applied to pitched balls. Corked bats — since proven by evil science to really not help a batted ball — have been around a while, were used likely by guys already in Cooperstown, and might even be in the game today since they are hard to detect and old superstitions die hard.

Performance enhancing drugs are very, very bad. Unless they are not. There are Hall of Famers who popped many an amphetamine before games as a pick-me-up, lest their performance be enhanced. Pots of black coffee have always been fine because being awake certainly enhances baseball performance over playing while asleep. And how else were our moral titans of yesteryear supposed to honor the game after a night of boozing and sexing and racisting and wife-beating without a little jolt? Truthfully, would Ken Griffey, Jr.’s use of a little something extra be held against the sweetest swing in the game’s history?

Only when are our superheroes are shown to be just really talented people who did what they had to do to win for their teams and themselves, and some big gray ethical line is crossed, do we need the sermons. They need to be shamed, and we need to be purified for our ignorance by pain.

“Many seemed to be very greatly and most agreeably affected,” Edwards wrote after one of his sermons. “[They were feeling] humility, self-condemnation, self-abhorrence.” The names permitted to appear in a sports museum should conjure up the very same feelings.

The elections of Martinez, Johnson, Smoltz, and Biggio inadequately satisfy on multiple levels. The Old Guard nods its head slowly, content that guys who “did it the right way” are in and without further pushing the revered stats of the black-and-white greats down the list. The casual, younger, and/or moderately progressive fans are satisfied because four inspirational speeches get to be shared on Facebook and their interest in baseball nostalgia is tentatively safe. And the writers get away with minimal “you didn’t” vote enough people in criticism.

In other words, the writers will continue to be assholes. For at least one more year, they will negate fun and awe. They will arbitrarily cast aside historically great athletes for committing the cardinal sin: sullying their constitution with more than abstinence and Communion wafers. For all their Puritan dangle-waving, these modern-day preachers can all go to hell.