Fire Joe Morgan

Joe Morgan, now vice-chairman of the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors, is the latest to make the assertion that different standards should be applied to players from the 90s than players from any previous generation:

Joe Morgan—two-time National League MVP, all-time great, Hall of Famer, and vice-chairman of the Hall’s board of directors—sent an email today from the general Hall of Fame email address to current voters, arguing (among other things) that drug users like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Mickey Mantle shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame, and that their fellow drug users should be excluded going forward.

Yes, this shit again. There are two full months until the next class of inductees is revealed; this will be two full months of arguing about steroids and Barry Bonds and what exactly “character” entails with regards to evaluating the career merits of the big men who play a game with a stick and ball, triviality at its most insufferable; and the reliably grating discourse being especially so was kicked off with a bang today upon the deliverance of Morgan’s letter in the inboxes of Hall voters today.

In it, Morgan wrote:

Players who played during the steroid era have become eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame.
The more we Hall of Famers talk about this – and we talk about it a lot – we realize we can no longer sit silent. Many of us have come to think that silence will be considered complicity. Or that fans might think we are ok if the standards of election to the Hall of Fame are relaxed, at least relaxed enough for steroid users to enter and become members of the most sacred place in Baseball. We don’t want fans ever to think that.

We hope the day never comes when known steroid users are voted into the Hall of Fame. They cheated. Steroid users don’t belong here.

Players who failed drug tests, admitted using steroids, or were identified as users in Major League Baseball’s investigation into steroid abuse, known as the Mitchell Report, should not get in. Those are the three criteria that many of the players and I think are right.

Why, if you were to admit players who used PEDS and are younger than Joe Morgan, next thing you know CHEATERS like Whitey Ford and Gaylord Perry might be inducted, and America’s innocence would be stained forever!

In related news, gaze at a Hall of Fame ballot that is less coherent than John Roberts’s opinion in Shelby County:

yes on clemens and sosa but no on bonds is… something https://t.co/If1DbPNwrF

— Jesse Spector has amazing tweets like… (@jessespector) November 23, 2017

Barry Bonds had a Baracalounger. A BARCALOUNGER! That’s just not Hall of Fame material.