Former commissioner Fay Vincent recently penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal in which he advocated that the Baseball Hall of Fame should remove the character standard for potential enshrinees. He also suggested that the Eras Committees should be disbanded with the vote going entirely back to the writers.
The Hall of Fame’s job is to look backward and honor past performance. Major League Baseball tries to protect the future of the sport by defending its integrity. By trying to inject nobility into its election standards, the Hall of Fame aimed to maintain the old-fashioned view that honors should accrue to the honorable.