Benjamin Hochman Benjamin Hochman is a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Baseball, this great game, unites us and then unties us, dividing debating fans over, well, everything.

There’s the designated hitter, defensive shifts, the importance of batting average, WAR (and what is it good for?), Jim Edmonds’ nickname, neon compression sleeves and, of course, Hall of Fame worthiness.

Hall of Fame debates can turn two friends into Whitey Herzog and Don Denkinger, searingly spewing and sparring about steroids users or Pete Rose or fringe Hall candidates. Yet, over the years, there was seemingly one thing that all fans could actually agree upon: Harold Baines wasn’t a Hall of Famer.

He was a very good player — played 22 years, though most not in the field, and he even made four All-Star teams — but he was no immortal. And even with the new analytics that sometimes “right a wrong,” proving a player was better than previously presumed, nothing changed the legacy of Harold Baines. That was until this past week’s inexplicable twist of history, when the Today’s Game Era Committee elected Baines to the Hall of Fame.