Bert Belongs, People

In the interest of transparency, many members of the Baseball Writer's Association now publish their Baseball Hall of Fame ballots. I think ESPN might even require its writers to do so.

So this site is tracking the published votes.

http://homerderby.com/2009-baseball-hall-of-fame-bbwaa-vote-tracker

Right now, as expected, Rickey Henderson is a slam dunk.

Jim Rice is on the fringe, and this is his last chance.

Bert Blyleven is getting 70 percent of the vote. Players need 75 percent to be inducted.

The HOF case for Blyleven is pretty easy to make, and Rich Lederer has boiled it down to one sentence for everyone. So memorize this, text it to a friend, have a T-shirt made, whatever:

Since 1900, Bert Blyleven ranks 5th in career strikeouts, 8th in shutouts, and 17th in wins.

Had Blyleven pitched for better teams, he'd have been in years ago. Come on, baseball writers. You get most of these right, eventually. Do the right thing here. Quit making the guy wait. He belongs in the HOF.

And if you don't believe this blogger, there are plenty of people you can read.

Try all these folks, for instance: http://www.bertbelongs.com/pages/read_the_writers.html

Or one of my favorite writers and baseball guys (and one who also thinks, as I do, that Ron Gardenhire is the most underrated manager in baseball) Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/01/02/hall.of.fame/index.html