Last week, we asked the question and concluded that, no, Greg Maddux would not be a unanimous Hall of Fame inductee. Although he obviously should be, there are too many voters and too many potential crackpots out there for Maddux to achieve that highest of honors.
Now we have confirmation: Maddux will not be a unanimous selection, because Dodgers beat reporter Ken Gurnick did not vote for him. His ballot, and reasoning:
Jack Morris
Morris has flaws – a 3.90 ERA, for example. But he gets my vote for more than a decade of ace performance that included three 20-win seasons, Cy Young Award votes in seven seasons and Most Valuable Players votes in five. As for those who played during the period of PED use, I won’t vote for any of them.
So, Maddux, whose numbers are unbelievably fantastic (and comically better than Morris’s), gets punished for playing in an era where the pitching numbers he put up should be held as even more impressive?
Ken Gurnick was clearly out to make a statement with his Hall of Fame vote, and he succeeded.
The nature of that statement, and volume of expletives and drool involved, I will leave to your imagination.