Peter Schmuck: My Hall of Fame ballot is in the mail (Part 3)

Now that I’ve listed and given the reasons for the 10 fine players whose names I checked on my 2025 Hall of Fame ballot, I think it’s a good time to explain why I didn’t vote for a couple of players who have Hall-worthy numbers and reserve the right to vote for them later.

It’s also a chance to relate my take on the Hall of Fame selection process, which is more complicated than it might appear.

The two players in question, of course, are Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, whose reputations were severely sullied by their connection to baseball’s steroid scandal.

I don’t think anyone on earth would dispute that each of them would have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer if not for the part they played in the sport’s shameful descent into illegal chemical enhancement, which has rightfully — if perhaps temporarily –blocked their path to Cooperstown.

The question is whether they should never get there or should simply have to wait either for a later ballot or for one of the future incarnations of the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee to decide whether one or both have waited long enough.

We’re going to find out if that is possible sooner than they will, because there are several players with similar credentials who have already timed out of the 10-year window to gain election through the Baseball Writers of America voting process.

If you were a regular reader of my baseball-related columns in the Baltimore Sun, I opined on more than one occasion that I felt the day would eventually come and hearts would soften toward the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire. I still do.

For now, however, my choice will likely be to give Ramirez my vote next year in his final year of eligibility. He probably won’t get to the 75 percent voting threshold, but it would be an acknowledgement of his historic numbers and an expression of my belief that he would have been Hall-worthy if he had never given in to the temptation to violate the game’s PED policy.

Rodriguez will have to wait a little longer. He’s only in his fourth year on the ballot and he – unlike Ramirez – has more time for more voters like me to give into a measure of ethical relativity and realize that the Hall of Fame isn’t exactly a cathedral of baseball saints to begin with.

I have spent the past week rewatching the early episodes of the great Ken Burns “Baseball” documentary series that remind us there are a number of reprehensible characters with plaques on the wall in Upstate New York.

Ty Cobb, for example, was a horrible racist with a psychopathic temper. Nineteenth-century icon Cap Anson used his stardom to vehemently promote the banning of African-American ballplayers from professional baseball, which contributed to an unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement” that stood for several generations until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.

Though I don’t think that Bonds, Clemens or Rodriguez are particularly great human beings, they aren’t horrible villains who set out to intentionally disgrace the National Pastime.

The BBWAA Hall of Fame voting process is a complicated one, even if you would think it shouldn’t be. If it were as simple as the voters simply deciding who is a Hall of Famer and who isn’t, there would not be a 10-year (which used to be a 15-year) eligibility period.

Of course, there are the undisputed first-ballot guys like Cal Ripken Jr. and Mariano Rivera, but there have been lots of players who took years to reach the 75 percent vote threshold because they were simply overshadowed by groups of more elite players on earlier ballots or even crowded out by an extraordinarily talent-packed list.

I gave an example of this in the second part of this now interminable HOF explainer. New York Mets reliever John Franco arrived on the HOF ballot in 2011 with the third-highest save total in major league history but did not even reach the 5-percent support threshold to remain on the ballot in ensuing years. The reasons: Relievers didn’t get enough respect back then and there were 13 eventual Hall of Famers on that ballot with him

That’s why I handed out a couple of votes this year to David Wright and Dustin Pedroia, whose fine careers were shortened by injuries. I don’t necessarily think they will be Hall of Famers but want to make sure they stay on the ballot long enough to give all of us supposed baseball historians time to think about it.

Like I said, it’s complicated.