The Chris Moeller Archives

I am Dan LeBatard

I don’t mean to brag…

But I have not only successfully voted-- but have successfully voted my conscience-- in the 2014 election for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I really didn’t think I would ever be able to say such a thing in my lifetime-- and before the age of 40, no less. Here’s how it happened. Deadspin.com purchased a ballot from someone that's on the list of “qualified” sportswriters-slash-voters, the man’s identity shrouded in secrecy, and then the man said he didn't need any money at all in exchange for handing over his ballot. Next, the website collected my vote, along with those of thousands of other baseball fans, and submitted, under this sportswriter’s name, a list of our ten very favorites from an impressive list of candidates, arguably the best list ever.

After the formal vote results were announced yesterday by the Hall of Fame, Deadspin publicly revealed that our angelic messenger was Miami Herald sportswriter and ESPN personality Dan LeBatard, to whom I am now eternally indebted.


By some combination of luck and happenstance, Deadspin and LeBatard even accepted some of my personal picks for use on our collective ballot. My pet cause, Mark McGwire, barely missed the cut of players whose names were submitted, which is disappointing, but then it’s hard to quibble with the will of the people.

Maddux and Glavine were both ultimately selected by the governing body, the Baseball Writers Association of America, for Hall enshrinement later this summer, along with Frank Thomas, a designated slugger that I deemed more of a one-dimensional All-Star-type player than a Hall of Famer while I was conscientiously clicking on names from my very crowded electronic ballot. I don’t expect Maddux and Glavine to send thank you cards or anything. I was just offering my support to them as part of my civic duty to a game that has provided me endless enjoyment.

Deadspin editors claim that they have another designated voter lined up already for 2015, if the terms surrounding a charitable donation can be finalized. It won’t be LeBatard this time around as he was stripped today of his membership and voting rights in the BBWAA for having engaged in this particular agreement with Deadspin. But his dual rewards for his courageousness, I hope, are the everlasting gratitude of the fans he shared his vote with for one glorious year and a feeling of well-deserved satisfaction that allows him to sleep at night like a tiny baby. It’s also worth nothing that Dan will still have a voice in the process next year as he will continue to be eligible to participate in the Deadspin vote.

And I simply cannot wait now until next year. I can see why these sportswriters get off on having this power-- and why it turns so many of them into sanctimonious jackasses. Will it be Biggio’s turn to get the call? The only catcher-slash-second baseman in the 3,000 hit club missed induction by only two votes this year. Is it Piazza’s turn as well? Bonds and Clemens both, perhaps? Maybe it will even be the year of destiny for Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who teamed up to save Bud Selig’s sorry commissioner ass back in 1998, rescuing the business of Major League Baseball from public ambivalence and making the world forget that Selig had cancelled the World Series four years earlier.

Perhaps eventually, Deadspin, along with its copycats, will even rescue our nation's baseball museum from Major League Baseball. Today the Hall of Fame voting process has a sliver of respectability where on Tuesday it had none.

On a somber, final note, LeBatard is getting hammered today by frothing members of his betrayed “fraternity.” These clowns of the keyboard-- four of which voted for Armando Benitez or J.T. Snow, and 16 of which didn't vote for Greg Maddux-- are correct that there was a major scandal connected to the Hall of Fame voting this year, and it was this: Both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens-- winners of a combined fifteen (not a misprint) MVP and Cy Young Awards-- received less than 36 percent support in the overall vote. I’m grateful that the indignity of that fact has nothing whatsoever to do with me. I voted for both of them.

posted by CM @ 7:30 PM