We're just a few days away from this year's Hall of Fame announcement. I haven't written about the HOF in awhile, but I fell compelled to do so now, as we are on the cusp of the first-ever Toronto Blue Jay to be inducted*.

* and by first Blue Jay, I mean that Roberto Alomar ** will be the first Blue Jay Hall of Famer to wear a Toronto cap on his plaque

** of course, there is no guarantee that Robbie will actually be inducted... but of the ballots that have been published so far, he's been on almost every one. If he's not inducted then I doubt that anyone will be

Yahoo sportswriter Tim Brown, for example, put only one name on his ballot, and it was Alomar. Judging from this paragraph, he appears to be a small-Hall guy:

The Hall, to me, is iconic great. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson – the Hall's first class – great. Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. great. Rickey great.

Which is fine, because I used to be one of those, too. I suspect that many or most baseball fans take some pride in the fact that the it's harder to get into Cooperstown than any other Hall of Fame (though to be honest, it's not something I've checked to see if it's true; I think it's something that is just taken for granted).

But I completely changed course a few years ago, and became a big-Hall guy - a really big, Hockey-Hall type guy. I think I gradually got tired of the Hall of Fame debate being dominated each year by assholes; whether it's writers who think that protecting the Hall of Fame from Mark McGwire is the equivalent of protecting the Ark of the Covenant from Nazis; or fans who think that the writers are idiots, either for putting Player X on their ballot or leaving him off; or players on the ballot who whine because they haven't been inducted; or players in the Hall who worry about diluting the HOF with lesser talents; or Dale Petroskey, who's just an asshole for no obvious reason.

And besides, exclusivity sucks. Many of us learn this in grade school, when we are either left out of groups, or form a group with the intent of leaving others out. But we keep doing it our whole lives, forming exclusive clubs or exclusive golf courses or exclusive this and that - but the strength of any group of humans is its diversity. Any exclusive group of like-minded individuals is as doomed over the long-term as a Royal family full of hemophiliacs; as soon as the founding members lose interest or die off, the quality of the membership declines, and soon the "exclusive" part is a joke because nobody wants to join.

Obviously the Hall of Fame has to be exclusive to some extent to justify its existence. But the actual, physical Hall is also a chartered museum that has to be, you know, interesting, to get people to show up. Most museums promote their wide variety of specimens to attract visitors; my guess is that the curators at Cooperstown feel the same way, and don't care too much for writers who mail in blank ballots. The induction ceremony in the summer will be OK with Alomar and Whitey Herzog and Doug Harvey and the Spink and Frick winners (if they're still alive) but it will be way more interesting and newsworthy if Bert Blyleven and Andre Dawson or someone else are there too.

I don't claim to know what the right number of inductees is; I can tell you that there are 69 players in the Hall who were active in 1930, only 31 in the HOF who were active in 1980, and that one of those numbers is too high while the other is too low. I'm guessing that between 40 and 50 would be OK. Using that standard, my ballot would look like:

Bert Blyleven
Roberto Alomar
Barry Larkin
Tim Raines
Alan Trammell
Edgar Martinez
Mark McGwire
Andre Dawson
Fred McGriff

Which I don't think is terribly obscene; I'm not talking about putting George Kelly or Rube Marquard in the Hall. And they're all better players than Jim Rice (an unnecessary shot at the Jimmer, but true nonetheless). They were all really great players - maybe not Hank Aaron, Cal Ripken Jr. great, but great nonetheless. And the Hall will be an infinitely richer place when their unique skills and careers become a part of it.