This should do wonders for the public’s confidence in the Hall Of Fame voting process; Rich Lederer of Baseball Analysts reported the Baseball Writers Association of America opted yesterday to provide membership to a select group of web journalists (link courtesy Repoz and Baseball Think Factory). However, of the 16 names accepted, many are well known from their days in print media and/or television (Jon Heyman, Peter Gammons, Tom Verducci, Ken Rosenthal,Tim Kurkjian, Jayson Stark). And while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, Lederer points out that of the 18 writers nominated, Rob Neyer and Keith Law somehow didn’t make the cut. .
Coming on the heels of Marvin Miller being overlooked for the Baseball Hall Of Fame, even the Plug Awards seem more legit. And while I do realize it was the Veteran’s Commitee that chose to recognize Bowie Kuhn rather than Miller, ’tis only natural to question the credibility of the BBWAA’s future votes. Neyer claims he was told “my membership was rejected because I don’t go to the ballpark often enough”, which is a curious criteria. It would be helpful to know exactly what qualifications the BBWAA expects, but the organization’s utterly unhelpful website is pretty light on such information.
(UPDATE : Law’s take on his omission )
Two things:
Only three writers were on the 12-person committe that voted for Marvin Miller. That was a Hall of Fame production and had nothing to do with the BBWAA.
As for Rob Neyer, BBWAA membership is for writers who cover games at the stadiums. A BBWAA credential gets us access to the press box, the clubhouse, etc. Most of what we do is based on keeping that access.
I’ve been covering baseball in New York since 1999 and I can never remember seeing Rob at a game. For him, BBWAA membership would be largely useless. Via the local chapters, writers who don’t actually cover games are excluded all the time.
Peter,
I stand corrected. More than one account of the Kuhn election / Miller rejection referred to the Veteran’s Committee. I probably should’ve looked that up rather than believing it. However, I did (as you’ll see above) take pains to stress the BBWAA
was not involved in said decision.
I have no idea how often Neyer attends a game in person. If being at the ballpark a minimum amount of time is the sole criteria for membership (and the other 16 web journalists who were just granted membership have a better attendance record than Rob), I suppose there’s no grand conspiracy.
As far as BBWAA membership being useless for Neyer, I’m not so sure about that. Rob might want to participate in Hall Of Fame balloting in ten years.
Hopefully he’s got some Portland Beavers ticket stubs he can submit as evidence of having proper baseball writer credentials.
Or his DirecTV bills. Is there any way that he can prove that he was watching Royals/Rays games last July? Isn’t that more heroically self-sacrificing than attending a dozen Yankees games?
David,
unless you sent that comment via Blackberry from the men’s room at Shea Stadium, I’m afraid I will have to confiscate your blogging credentials.
Don’t Gammons, Stark and a few others do print? And the SI guys are also in print.
I think Neyer got a raw deal. Maybe Bill Conlin and Stephen A. Smith were counting the ballots. . .
Do you really have to be a beat writer to end up voting for the Hall?
I would think you can watch and see and evaluate much more watching every game on a daily basis.
A guy like Neyer would be a great choice for a vote. Maybe they dont like the hits he gives the Hall and the writers for their obvious mistakes.
Good point but the singular form of criteria is criterion.