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Old August 18th, 2008, 09:02 AM   #24 (permalink)
Triad
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Looking at the overall question another way, we've basically had 130 years of baseball history, with the number of players heavily tipped to the last 40 years. Essentially, the first 90 years amounts to about 50 player-seasons when gauged by the last 40 years. So we have about 90 years worth of history when compressing to the current trend of teams and players. In those "90" years, we've got the following players who are possibly being kept out of the Hall of Fame who are deserving by most accounts:

Pete Rose
Joe Jackson
Mark McGwire
Barry Bonds
Sammy Sosa
Rafael Palmeiro
Roger Clemens

That's nearly one player per decade, on average. So on that trend, 100 years from now we could expect the list to be about 15 players on the outside looking in who would otherwise be first-tier Hall of Famers. That's almost enough to start another Hall of Fame, or at least its own wing. How do we reasonably expect to leave such a substantial amount of the game's best players out? It's antithetical, and I believe it will become more obviously so as time goes on. The Hall of Fame will be incomplete without them.
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