Hall of Fame madness

I’m a few days behind the curve on this, but oh well. The new inductees into the baseball Hall of Fame were recently announced, and there was only two of them: Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice. For Henderson, this was his first time on the ballot, and for Rice, it was his 15th and final time on the ballot. I am not going to discuss the merits of either because they both belong. But what I will touch on his how Rickey Henderson only got 94.8 percent of the votes and how no player in MLB history has ever been inducted to the hall of fame with a unanimous ballot.
Think about that. Nobody, not Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, anybody. How can that be? If anybody belongs in the HOF, it is Willie Mays. Many consider him the greatest player of all time. Yet he didn’t get a unanimous ballot. Now, some voters are under the impression that because Mays didn’t get a unanimous ballot that nobody should get one. If the greatest player, or players, didn’t go in uncontested, how can anybody? I guess I understand that thinking, but it is idiotic. If Rickey Henderson received a unanimous ballot, that doesn’t make him better than Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. It just means that Henderson is, without a doubt, a bonafide Hall of Famer.
Henderson is the all-time leader in numerous categories, including stolen bases and runs scored. In one amazing hear, he had more runs scored than games played. Sure, runs scored is a product of who is behind him, but he has to get on base and put himself in a position to score. And the batters behind him got better pitches to hit because the pitcher was concerned with Henderson stealing a base. He was the greatest lead-off hitter of all time. Anybody who is the greatest anything of all time deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Yet, he received less than 95% of the vote. Ridiculous.
This obsession with keeping a ballot from being perfect is insane. The sports writers who didn’t vote for Henderson, or who won’t vote for Greg Maddox in the future, are crazy. All they are doing is perpetuating an ill-conceived idea and continuously thinking that hundreds of wrongs make a right. It was wrong for Mays to not receive a perfect ballot, but that doesn’t mean Rickey Henderson should not have.
If enough writers buy into this twisted logic, it is possible that somebody like Henderson or Maddox, might not make the HOF. If enough voters are determined not to have a perfect ballot and feel safe not voting for a person because they assume that everybody else will vote for him, he could get left off the ballot. Think about that. With this current mindset, it is possible that Maddox, the greatest pitcher of the last 40 years, could conceivably not be voted in his first year.
The sports writers who elect the Hall of Fame members wasted an opportunity to begin to correct decades worth of mistakes and set the platform to allow future unanimous votes. Instead, they clung to their stubborn, ill-conceived ideas and kept one of the greatest of all-time, a sure fire hall of famer, from receiving his due, perpetuated an antiquated idea and made it more difficult for any player to receive a perfect ballot. Is it any wonder people don’t like the media?