Hall of nothing

Serial jackass Curt Schilling almost got into the Hall of Fame yesterday. But it's not the Hall of Almost, so he didn't.

He came up 16 votes shy of entry, and no one else got any closer, which means there will be no inductees this year for the first time since Ike was in the White House. That's 61 years to you and me, kids.

This happened not because there was no one on the ballot worthy of induction. It happened because baseball writers are a persnickety bunch, and frequently fuss over irrelevancies the way biddies fuss over hands of canasta.

Example: The biddies fussing over Curt Schilling's politics.

To be sure, the guy IS a serial jackass, a lunatic fringe Trumpazoid who thought it was cool to cheer lynching journalists and storming the Capitol in the name of William Wallace or Paul Revere and the Raiders or whoever. But he could also  throw the hell out of a baseball -- which, unless he's doing a life stretch for first-degree murder, frankly is what matters most when you're considering whether a guy should be in the Hall of Fame.

Look. I get it. Schilling's a disgusting human being. And Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds -- who, don't look now, crept ever closer to induction yesterday -- are un-indicted alleged  juicers.

The Blob doesn't care. The Blob, if it had a vote, would have put a check mark beside all three of them.

Schilling?

Personally I couldn't care less if Schilling voted for Our Former Only Available President And Inciter Of Insurrection eleventy-hundred times, or if he thinks Democrats are emissaries from Hell who bake children into their pizzas. I care about what kind of pitcher he was, which in my estimation was good enough to get him into the HOF.

And Clemens and Bonds?

Whether they juiced or not, the documentation is pretty solid they both allegedly began doing so after they'd already put up Hall of Fame credentials. Also, amphetamines in the '60s, '70s and '80s -- which also enhanced performance, and which many an HOFer gobbled like M&Ms in those days.

And, yes, I know, the Hall has a morals clause. But no one's ever taken it seriously. There are drunks and racists and crooks and utter psychopaths in the Hall. Kenesaw Mountain Landis is in the Hall, and he kept black players out of Major League Baseball for decades. 

Call me crazy, but this seems a bit more relevant to Hall of Fame qualifications than whether or not someone is a right-wing asshat. Yet there the Judge is.

And there Schilling and Bonds and Clemens should be. Enhanced nutjobbery or performance aside.