Apparently Hall of Fame ballots are due soon, so Hall of Fame voters are posting their ballots on Twitter and Hall of Fame voter naysayers are all up in arms over who the Hall of Fame voters voted for.

As area wiseass @samtpage put it: “@famoussportswriter your hall of fame ballot is wrong!”

Here’s my thing about the Hall of Fame: There’s a big group of guys who obviously deserve to be in, the Babe Ruths and Tom Seavers. There’s a bigger group of guys who obviously don’t deserve to be in, the Roger Cedenos and Andy Stankiewiczes. Then there’s another group of guys who might deserve to be in, and for every one you can pick out a better player who isn’t in or a worse player who is, and that’s where the debate lies.

I always kind of liked it that Jim Rice wasn’t a Hall of Famer because he always struck me as a perfect benchmark for offensive production not meriting Hall of Fame entry. If you’re a significantly better hitter than Jim Rice, you make the Hall of Fame. If you’re not, you don’t.

But I failed to consider the fear, of course.

Anyway, the most important thing is that it’s not really important at all, and the Hall of Fame is just a fun thing to talk about and a nice place to visit and not at all a good justification for any heated rhetoric. Normally it’s a debate I find fun and interesting, but this year, for whatever reason, it has grown tiresome. I suspect Twitter is partly responsible. It seems like Twitter makes everyone angry, or at least exposes everyone’s anger. Or maybe 140 characters just force everyone to seem rude.

Whatever it is, I’m finding it difficult to care too much about the Hall of Fame balloting. I’m more concerned with the general direction of the Hall, anyway. The way I see it, there’s about a 50/50 chance that in five years, the Hall of Fame is completely meaningless.

If Barry Bonds and his ilk are shunned from the Hall for a crime they were clearly allowed to commit, the Hall of Fame will be rendered a silly, whitewashed pageant. It will have no more value than the Gold Glove, something that might look nice on a plaque but will mean nothing to anyone who knows anything about baseball.