Here's the trick to all you baseball writers who have HoF ballots to submit. You consider the eligible players. You think about whether or not they belong in the Hall of Fame. You vote.
You don't use the voting period as your own personal "make me famous", me-me time, like Paul Ladewski apparently is doing.
"This isn't to suggest that Gwynn or Ripken or the majority of the other eligible candidates padded his statistics with performance-enhancers and cheated the game, their predecessors and the fans in the process. ... But tell me, except for the players themselves, who can say what they put into their bodies over the years with any degree of certainty?"
Nobody can. And I'll tell you another thing, Paul Ladewski... Nobody can tell me that Babe Ruth wasn't on steroids. Nobody can prove to me that Babe Ruth actually wasn't a robot!
"What makes Gwynn and Ripken so special that they deserve to be unanimous selections?" he wrote. "Walter Johnson, Cy Young and Honus Wagner didn't receive such Hall passes. Neither did Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. In fact, nobody has in the history of the game. Based on the standards set by the Hall of Fame voters decades ago, is there a neutral observer out there who can honestly say Gwynn and Ripken should be afforded an unprecedented honor?"
Again... Don't think so hard about it. If you're a Baseball Writer of America, try try try to suppress your natural jerk instincts. You're given a job. Just do your job. It's already your fault that some of the suck has entered the Hall of Fame . Does Tony Gwynn belong in the Hall of Fame? The answer is easy, so quit being a f_ckin' idiot and give the easy answer.