A Tradition of Stupidity...

You're reading a guy that is all for tradition.

I love the fact that you can do something that has been done for years before by many different people. Some people call it being unoriginal. I call those people assholes.
It's a great way to have a link to the past, but also have a story that you can pass on to future generations so it links to the future. To me, there is just something nice about having something in place that you know will be carried on and everyone will add their own piece to the tradition, allowing it to grow. Also, it's a great way to form a bond with people. Even if you don't really know them you know that this is something that is as important to them as it is to you.

But, that's when it's a good tradition. When it's a stupid tradition I'm all for it being stopped as quickly as possible.

Yesterday they announced the newest members of Baseball's Hall of Fame. For those of you interested it was Ricky Henderson (Ricky is also a member of the 'Talking About Yourself in the Third Person Hall of Fame.' Ricky was pleased about Ricky's induction.) and Jim Rice (about frickin' time). But, that's not what bothered me. Neither guy was a unanimous induction - and no one ever will be. Why, you ask? (OK, maybe you don't care, but it's my blog). It's because Babe Ruth wasn't.

That's right. The baseball writers, in a backwards tradition, have taken it upon themselves to see that no one ever is a unanimous decision on their first attempt at induction simply because Babe Ruth missed it by 11 votes. What they are doing, essentially, is celebrating the fact that many years ago 11 men out of the 226 who could vote sat in a room and, in fits of either bias or stupidity, kept a man who one season hit more homeruns by himself then some entire teams from going into the Hall of Fame as a unanimous choice. Maybe he drank all their beer one night, who knows?

But, yes, please, let's remember these idiots by keeping up the tradition.

What the baseball writers are doing is essentially honoring a bad decision. Do you think that executives at Coca-Cola sit around and fondly remember the day someone pitched New Coke? But, what annoys me even more is the fact that these writers won't even admit that's what they're doing. They have to come up with flimsy excuses about why a guy like Cal Ripken missed it by 8 votes (Playing that many games in a row probably hurt his defense!) and yet, in the same year, 3 of these guys found a reason to vote for Dante Bichette (Um... he had a great head of hair!). Trying to make that case is laughable and it ruins the credibility of the baseball writers.

This is one tradition I'm all for ending.