To the Veteran's Committee

Well, at Al's urging, I'm posting this here. It's the email I sent to the Hall of Fame after the Veteran's Committee failed to admit anyone for the second election in a row.

Just fyi, one of the things my mom, a pretty amazing woman, taught me is that people take your concerns far more seriously if they intersect with their own. So I tried to put this in terms that will appeal to the desires of the folks who run the Hall. In doing so I assumed that they value at least one, if not both of the following things: 1) their image, and 2) customers coming through their doors.

And yeah, maybe it's harsh. But maybe they deserve harsh, y'know?

Subject: Veteran's Committee

Well, another Veteran's Committee election has come and gone, and again they've done nothing. Why is it they exist again? It's certainly no longer obvious.

I was under the impression the purpose of the committee was to address omissions and oversights by the writers. This doesn't seem to be what's happening. Instead, where the old Veteran's Committee was too lax in letting friends in, this one seems to be on a mission to maintain their own exclusivity. Sadly, the system is still broken, only in a different way than it was before. I urge you to fix it.

Personally, I believe the omission of Ron Santo, demonstrably one of the top 10 third basemen of all time, lowers the credibility of the Hall's claim to represent the best in the sport. I won't be visiting the Hall until he's in, and if this means that I die without seeing Cooperstown, well, perhaps my time is better spent in places that maintain their credibility with more care.

But, worse than the omission of Santo is the fact that the Veteran's Committee can be stopped in accomplishing it's goals by a few selfish members. Mike Schmidt should be publicly denounced for his comment that he won't ever vote for anyone else to be admitted. The lack of action by the committee clearly implies that they are more interested in maintaining their own images than with representing the best in the sport. Members who are truly interested in what's best for the Hall should step forward and take action to set up a new voting system whereby it is actually possible for the Veteran's Committee to achieve their stated purpose and let some deserving players in. The Hall itself is what suffers most here, as do those men who are members and who act with conscience, honor, and a sense of responsibility.

For what it's worth, my husband and I are the types of people who travel for baseball. As a family we've gone to minor league games in other states, made trips to Spring Training, and caught flights to Chicago just to be at Wrigley Field. We've talked longingly about a vacation that involves going to several major league parks. We spend significant amounts of money on baseball every year, and have helped to enchant others with baseball's magic, creating new fans, young and old. The idea of taking a trip to the Hall appeals to me, but not until I feel that it's gone back to being something more than a selfish old men's club.

I'll be talking to my baseball friends again all summer, and I'll urge them not to go to the Hall of Fame until it can regain some of the credibility it has lost in recent years.

Sincerely,
Helen Simmins-McMillin
Baseball fan, Orange County, California