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For the 10th and final time, Gary Sheffield was left off of the MLB Hall of Fame ballot. Sheffield had a very decorated career in the MLB, and after being left off yet again, he had a lot of words for the process that goes into selecting players for the MLB Hall of Fame.
Gary Sheffield played his final MLB season in 2009. He was in the league for 21 years, and he spent time with the Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, then Florida (now Miami) Marlins, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers and New York Mets. He finished with a career batting average of .292, he hit 509 home runs and 1,676 RBIs. He will not be a hall of famer, however.
“If a reporter has a vote and he didn’t really know my story or watch me play on an everyday basis, then what’s the credibility of a guy voting for anybody that he didn’t watch or follow?” Sheffield said during an appearance on Audacy’s The Bret Boone Podcast. “Or a player may not be their preference. You and I both know about this game, people have preferences. They have guys that they choose to like, and then if somebody says something about a guy that they don’t know, then they choose to dislike him without even getting to know him.”
Sheffield clearly isn't a fan of the way that MLB Hall of Fame voting takes place, and he thinks that the system is flawed. No matter what, he believes that voters are biased.
“It’s a flawed system based on guys not watching you on a day-to-day basis,” Sheffield continued. “Because if they did there’s no way they could look at you with a straight face and say this guy’s better than this guy and his numbers mean more than his numbers. Just from that standpoint alone, it’s biased, and a lot of it is politics and a lot of other things when you look at it. For me, there’s no one way that is going to fix this problem, but I can tell you that reporters are human beings, and the fact that they can tell you that they’re not biased, I don’t believe that. Whoever believes that is believing a fool because I just know for a fact that they are biased, and they do what they want to do and how they want to do it.”
The Hall of Fame is a very special part of the MLB, and Sheffield thinks that the league should do something about the voting process.
“When it comes to like something as prestigious as The Hall Of Fame, that to me is like not just me and the writers, it’s a stain on the game as a whole,” Sheffield said. “And I don’t see how Major League Baseball can continue to let this happen. Even the Hall Of Fame should step in I think and say we don’t want people representing the Hall the way they’re representing it because there is an infection going on where these guys are just not taking care of it like they should. Guys getting in now, I guess milestones don’t mean anything no more, if I like them enough and his character is off the charts let’s just get them in.”
Gary Sheffield was one of the biggest MLB Hall of Fame snubs this year, and it is shame that he isn't part of this class.
