It’s Baseball Hall of Fame voting season and you know what that means … Dan Shaughnessy shines brightest for all the wrong reasons.
This is Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy’s 2019 Hall of Fame ballot:
And finally from the Globe, ballot #200 is from Dan Shaughnessy. No adds or drops for returning candidates on his Mo-only ballot. From the Globe's group reveal: https://t.co/zYTUvj7xgi
In the Tracker: https://t.co/8ISx82oWgM pic.twitter.com/N9m6xwH76m
— Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) January 20, 2019
I mean I don’t even know what to say to this.
Dan Shaughnessy just went and put out the worst Hall of Fame ballot probably ever. Even worse, he went out of his way to make his worst ballot of all time public knowledge because, I guess, he thought people would agree with him?
Well Dan, the people did not agree with you. The people, rightfully so, called you, perhaps, the dumbest person that’s ever lived.
And there we have it. @Dan_Shaughnessy with a “why am I even voting” ballot.
— Bert (@YankeePride14) January 20, 2019
He’s a joke here in Boston.
— Ben Bousa (@BBousa27) January 20, 2019
Undeniably winner of worst ballot of the year
— Goldin Auctions (@GoldinAuctions) January 20, 2019
What a farce. I'm embarrassed this ballot comes out of Boston.
— KindaClarkKent (@KindaClarkKent) January 20, 2019
Read the tweets Dan, they all hate you. All of them are rightfully assuming that you made this inexcusably terrible ballot public just so that people would be talking about you.
This is exactly what’s wrong with the Hall of Fame.
The writers with votes can wield them to get people buzzing about their takes. They can be completely subjective about a player’s worthiness for the greatest honor a baseball player can receive because they didn’t get an interview 17 years ago. Some writers haven’t even reported on baseball for years and yet they still have a say on what players are worthy of entering Cooperstown.
In a way, this is even worse than earlier this summer when Bill Ballou of the Telegram said he didn’t think Mariano Rivera was worthy of entry into the Hall of Fame.
It takes a special kind of strange to think that Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time, doesn’t deserve to be immortalized in the place where the greatest in the game find their name celebrated. At the very least, Ballou admitted that it might be Boston bias and that he wouldn’t ruin Rivera’s chances of being the first unanimous player elect to the Hall of Fame.
Shaughnessy, however, selected Rivera as the only player worthy. He looked up and down the list and said, “You know what?, Roy Halladay shouldn’t be a Hall of Famer. Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling can go screw themselves too.”
Halladay is the name left off the list that really works me up.
Doc was one of the best to ever do it. Two-time Cy Young winner. Eight-time MLB All-Star. Sixty-seven complete games. A career 3.38 ERA and 2117 strikeouts. The only knock against him? The fact that he passed prematurely because he was operating a plane in a dangerous manner while enjoying his well-deserved retirement years.
Yes, he’s tracking to be elected in his first year by a solid margin anyway, but having the nerve to leave him off your ballot on purpose is absolutely preposterous.
And say what you will about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, you can’t tell the story of baseball without them. I don’t care if you want to put an asterisk on their name to identify them as products of the steroid era but they were the most dominant at their crafts when they laced up.
And as much as I hate Curt Schilling for 2004, that guy is a Hall of Famer. He’s been ruined by the “character clause” due to his strong and sometimes outlandish opinions on the state of modern politics. But that doesn’t matter.
It’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Good Dudes Who Also Happened To Play Baseball Pretty Well.
The internet sees through you, Dan Shaughnessy. You made your awful ballot public so people would talk about you and it worked. We’re all talking about how much of a joke your ballot is.
