Fan Interference

Here’s one person’s answer to that question.

Graham Womack of The Sporting News, per a post here about a month ago, has wrapped up his readers’ poll of the top 25 players not in the Hall of Fame. The only restriction was that they had to have been retired since 2010, just like with actual Cooperstown eligibility. Other factors, like not being on the Cooperstown eligibility list (Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe) or not playing MLB baseball (Sadaharu Oh) weren’t considered.

And, Womack has his results up. There’s two separate results.

One is ranking these 25. The second is whether they belong in Cooperstown or not.

Takeaways?

1. There’s pretty strong fan voter resistance, on the second results, to Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Palmeiro. There is NOT such resistance to Bagwell or Piazza. So, it seems like a lot of fans aren’t accepting of PEDers. But, they also don’t believe Bags or Pizza Man were PEDers.

2. Disappointingly, people think Jack Morris is one of the 25 best players retired before 2010 but not in the Hall of Fame.

3. On the rankings part, 369 people got at least one vote; that included many write-ins beyond a 200-player ballot Womack listed. And, thus, per number of voters, it’s actually almost 500 persons’ composite answer.

Your thoughts?