Hall of Fame thoughts: Selig and the steroid players

The deadline has passed for the writers to turn in their Hall of Fame ballots, but I'll keep writing about the Hall because

• the Twins haven't given me a reason to change topics
• I have more to say and
• it's my blog and you can't stop me.

Don't understand Hall voters changing opinion on Bonds/Clemens because of Selig's election. He was elected by Veterans committee, not BBWAA

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 30, 2016

Yes, but ... a fairly vocal contingent of writers have for years been calling for the Hall to provide explicit guidance on steroid users and steroid suspects. Ignore the topic or bar the door? The Hall has declined to do so. The long time sentence in the voting rules remains:

Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

For many of the electorate, the words "integity" and "character" justify passing over the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and other suspected or acknowledged steroid users. Others don't, particularly of those who were (or may have) used in the no-test era. The people who run the Hall of Fame have left that decision up to the voters.

But those same people have a heavy thumb on the Veterans Committee scale. The ever-changing rules and composition of the panels make that entry to enshrinement much easier to manipulate. Marvin Miller, for example, isn't in because the various panels given the task of judging him over the years have always been loaded with enough management figures to ensure that the union boss wasn't going to slip in. (The commissioner's office doesn't directly run the Hall, but the Hall likes to be liked by the commissioner's office.)

And the Veterans Committee in recent years has seen fit to slide two notable steroid enablers and beneficiaries, Selig and Tony LaRussa, in.

That's not an explicit endorsement of steroid users, but it's an implicit one. Had the Hall wanted to demonstrate a hard line on PEDs. it could have set up those panels accordingly. It didn't.

Winter Meetings: Hall of Fame vote

The annual baseball swap meet, jobs fair and self-promotion festival known as the winter meetings opened Sunday with the usual ceremonial throwing in of the Hall of Fame inductees.

There are two ways to be chosen for induction: the writers vote, which is on players and is pretty stable, and the "veterans committee," no longer called such, which is constantly tweeked by the powers that be in an unceasing and doomed effort to finally get it right. It's the latter that occurs at the start of the meetings.

At this point that process is a lot better at choosing non-players to get plaques than players, and that was the case again Sunday, when retired commissioner Bud Selig and not-fully-retired executive John Schuerholz were chosen for the honor.

An air of doddering ineptitude has crept into my beloved Hall of Fame. A used car salesman is here.

— Old Hoss Radbourn (@OldHossRadbourn) December 5, 2016

I too regard Bud Selig as more worthy of derision than honor, but ...  Bowie Kuhn's in the Hall of Fame. The standard for commissioners isn't imposing. Major League Baseball does not run the Hall of Fame, but, as Bill James wrote decades ago about the relationship, the people who do run the Hall of Fame want very much to have the people who run MLB like their institution. So Kuhn -- and Selig -- are in, and Marvin Miller is not.

As for Schuerholz -- yeah, outstanding general manager who built a great organization in Atlanta, and the precedent for inducting the quasi-active executive was set already (Pat Gillick). I guess it's better than waiting until the guy is dead or at death's door for induction, as with Branch Rickey decades ago.

If there's a surprise in the results, it's that George Steinbrenner wasn't even remotely close in the balloting. Good.