Guess you cannot be too surprised that this has happened. ESPN’s Dan Le Batard wanted to show how broken the voting for MLB’s Hall of Fame is and decided to give away his vote to sports blog Deadspin. His only request was that he did not receive any amount of money in exchange. He wanted to show the public the “hypocrisy” of the voting system, especially when it came to players associated with steroids.
The BBWAA banned Le Batard from ever voting again on Hall of Fame candidates and his membership to Baseballs Writers Association of America was suspended for one year. While it may have cost him, he ultimately got what he wanted. His intent was to expose the broken voting system and that is exactly what he did. Here is his full explanation,
“I don’t think I’m any more qualified to determine who is Hall of Fame-worthy than a fan who cares about and really knows baseball. In fact, many people analyzing baseball with advanced metrics outside of mainstream media are doing a better job than mainstream media, and have taught us some things in recent years when we were behind. In other words, just because we went to journalism school and covered a few games, just because accepted outlets gave us their platform and power, I don’t think we should have the pulpit to ourselves in 2014 that way we did in 1936.”
