Hall of Fame Voters

I am enraged that Buck O'Neil was not elected to the Hall of Fame. Joe Posnanski has already expressed the outrage of Kansas City much more eloquently than I can, so I will simply echo his sentiments here. Keith Olbermann has also written a couple of nice blog entries that hit home.

Look, there was no enormous outcry demanding that the Hall of Fame double the representation of the Negro Leagues. The committee in question was assembled essentially for the sole purpose of legitimizing a reason to put Buck O'Neil into the Hall. No one could even name the 17 additional inductees until this committee was put together, so there was hardly any groundswell of popular demand for Effa Manley or Andy Cooper. This was an election cobbled together to put Buck O'Neil into the Hall of Fame and they screwed it up.

It's that simple. And it's that sad.

(And I would be saying this even if Buck hadn't called my son "Home Run" when he signed a ball for him last summer.)