Every year the BBWAA announces the results of their election to the Baseball Hall of Fame and every year I get more worked up over it than I rightly should.  The immense amount of bullshit arguments over why certain players should or should not get in I find incredibly dumbfounding.  Here are some of my favorites:
Really?  This is legitimately your poor excuse for rationalizing not voting for a player?  This one blows my mind.  It's not even that they don't think they're a HOFer or not.  They just don't think they should get in immediately.  What difference does that make?  What discernible difference does that possibly make?  When folks talk about Luis Aparicio or Billy Williams, or Don Drysdale does anyone say, "Well, they're all great hall of fame players but certainly not first ballot guys."

No.  You know why?  Because nobody gives a shit you conceited jackasses.  Either you're in the HOF or you're not.  Quit marginalizing a player's worthiness of when they should get in.  If you think they belong then vote for them you morons!

Ugh, shut up already.  I hate this expression so much.  It's most commonly uttered by smug pricks that feel the folks they voted for are supremely better than the others.  I heard this numerous times when folks argued against Andre Dawson being voted in last year, which I find amusing since Carrie Muskat had this to say this year when talking about her recent ballot that only had Roberto Alomar on it.

Alomar is one of the most gifted second basemen I've ever seen. Why didn't I vote for others? To me, the Hall of Fame should be comprised of the elite ballplayers, who are clearly superior without argument. Someone recently wrote about the need for the "Hall of Very Good Players," and I would put Blyleven, Morris, Larkin, Martinez, Raines and Trammell in there.

For someone that voted for Dawson every year, which in my mind was worthy although many others didn't see it that way, it seems rather hypocritical of Carrie to be this high and mighty about her ballot this year.  Also to wax poetic about Alomar being a gifted second basemen and refusing to acknowledge the same for Larkin and to a lesser extent Trammell at shortstop I find pretty ridiculous.

Fine.  That's your choice.  I'm not against that decision.  However maybe you should go back and reconsider all of those guys from the 1980s you consistently snub because their stats don't hold up to more recent players.  So you're against voting for the steroid guys but still use their stats as a benchmark against the previous era?  These people need to give up their ballots outright if this is their stance.

If you're so against the Steroid Era then what better message to send by not only refusing to vote for those guys but for voting the elite players of the decade before the stats became so inflated?  Jim Rice shouldn't have needed 15 tries to get elected dammit.  Tim Raines, Dale Murphy, Alan Trammell and Don Mattingly all deserve a closer inspection.  You refuse to vote for Clemens when he becomes eligible?  No problem.  How about putting your support behind Jack Morris instead, who's dominance seems to have been lost on a whole bunch of folks frightened by his career ERA.

Look I love stats, and in baseball they prove a vital tool when comparing players and such.  But sometimes these mythical benchmarks that have been set take way too much precedence.  300 wins, 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, etc.  All incredible milestones to reach.  But 287 wins, 2,605 hits, and 498 home runs are all pretty damn impressive as well.

And don't get me started on losses.  Losses seem to be one of the main arguing points for folks against Bert Blyleven getting into the hall.  250 losses to his 287 wins is just too many according to some writers.  Never mind Bert played the bulk of his career on some horrendously shitty teams that offered him little to no run support.  For god's sake he went 13-16 in 1976 despite having a 2.87 ERA!  Can he help that he received no run support?  Going back to that MLB article that Muskat made her ballot choice case, Marty Noble, MLB.com beat writer for the Mets had this to say about Blyleven.

A year later, I have voted for Alomar, the best defensive second baseman I've ever seen. I promised to vote for him, and I have, though uncomfortably. I still can't get past Blyleven's 250 losses. That's too many for a 287-game winner, no matter the number of shutouts and strikeouts. Blyleven lost 17 games in his lone 20-win season and lost 10 or more 16 times. In my mind, he produced two, perhaps three Hall of Fame seasons. Not enough.

Does it matter to you that of those 17 losses, seven of them were complete games?  You see, back in 1973 set up men and closers weren't relied on as much as they are now.  Starting pitchers went out to the mound with the full expectation of pitching nine innings.  Of those seven complete game losses that year, none of them did Blyleven allow more than four runs and in six of them he allowed only 3 or fewer runs.

Of course had Bert won just 13 more games in his career he'd probably be a shoo-in.  Also check Noble's first sentence.  Yep, feel free to go back and review that first argument I mentioned...

In the end after all the arguing for and against we'll probably learn in less than an hour that more than likely Blyleven and Alomar got in.  The rest will just have to wait until next year when another bevy of bullshit excuses from the self-important collective of ignorant baseball writers will prevent them from gaining entry once more.