Letter: The Babe’s grandson weighs in on Hall vote

Today, January 25, the National Baseball Hall of Fame makes its annual announcement of who has made the cut and has answered the call.

This should be a number one priority on the daily news shows if baseball is America’s Pastime, but the truth is baseball is the game that time has passed.

Tom Brady’s speculated retirement has commanded a seven-minute segment on “The Today Show” promoting football’s greatest player before the once-greatest entire sport in America. Product placement is crucial if you plan on competing, and once again the NFL has upstaged the brightest Baseball Analytic Champions.

Well, is it any coincidence that the player who will be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame, David Ortiz, the star slugger who led the Boston Red Sox to their first World Championship since my Grandfather Babe Ruth was a Red Sox pitcher in 1918, was shot in the back six times “by mistake,” you will understand the precarious position Major League Baseball finds itself in.

Major League Baseball has shot itself in the back, six times in an apparent attempt to commit National Baseball Suicide.

David Ortiz’s teammate, Curt Shilling, will not be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame after garnering 75% of the Baseball Writers Vote in 2021. After demanding to be taken off the writers’ ballot because he felt he was being snubbed after pitching the Red Sox to their first World Championship after my granddad placed a little hex on the Red Sox after being traded to the New York Yankees for Show Time money in 1919, the Baseball Writers took the cowards’ way out and refused to vote for a bona fide Hall-of-Famer who felt he had been slighted (rightly so). Curt Shilling is no wallflower and his opinionated political statements drove the stake in his Baseball Heart by the BBWA Writers spiteful collective mind.

Maybe it’s not such a big deal because, at one time, Mel Ott, star slugger of the New York Giants, didn’t even show up in Cooperstown for his own induction ceremony in 1951. Ty Cobb was late for the first Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony in 1939 (He was actually elected with my grandfather in 1936 but the plaques were not ready). You cannot find Ty Cobb’s photograph in any of the Hall First Class assemblage. If you have a photograph of Ty Cobb in The First Class photo it was airbrushed in because he wasn’t there until later in the day.

Baseball is a team game despite what the Major League promoters try to sell you. To win a World Championship for the first time in 86 years is not accomplished by One Timely Home Run Hitter. There are momentous occasions in history when a player’s actions on the field far outweigh anything he can say after his playing days are over. We have become so politicized as a Nation that the collective poison has seeped into the Baseball Writer’s minds and this is a national crime.

Teammates who accomplish something after 86 years of futility deserve better. Curt Shilling is a Hall of Fame Pitcher in my book and is being denied because public sentiment outweighs public logic. Curt is a Hall-of-Famer in Red Sox Nation and will never be denied there.

As America continues to be “locked out” by the Baseball Collectivisto who hide behind anti-trust protection eschewing hard-working Americans the right to purchase $12 beers and $8 hot dogs at their local dens of iniquity.

After leading two organizations to multiple World Championships, my grandfather knew a little about being locked out, as the Major League owners conspired to deny him a managing job after erecting a stadium in his honor, filling it with American asses and living lavishly at my grandfathers expense.

You can honor an MVP and Cy Young award winner who hasn’t won anything with his team and deny a man who won a world series after the team has been denied for 86 years? There is a special place in heaven waiting for Curt Shilling right next to my Grandfather, who was a pretty good pitcher in his own right.

James Bloomer
Cooperstown
Babe Ruth’s Grandson