The writer makes a good point about HoF debate and society debate in general.

Which means some of you will now take my children away....

EDITED

No one wants to read my grousing and I probably should make a New Year's Resolution to stop it.

The writer makes a good point about HoF debate and society debate in general.

I'm curious if it was ever not so? More people have platforms to get their opinions out there, and that changes what we know about the range of opinions, but are we so sure that debates were so much more rational even in the consensus eras? We have had eras when party breakdowns didn't predict ideological breakdowns--in the period between the 1930s and 1980s, generally--and that has interesting consequences, but the debates over the Civil Rights Act weren't exactly from Plato's dialogues even so.

Conflict is. It doesn't demand an external explanation for its existence.

I’m not sure how this gets turned around. But I’ve never enjoyed the Hall of Fame discussions less than I have this year. And it’s just going to get worse. This is not helping anybody. If you take the fun out of the Hall of Fame, you just have a dusty old building. That’s to say: You have nothing.

Burn it to the ground and start again. Barry Bonds should be the third inductee.

you just have a dusty old building

No way! The cleaning staff at the HoF have 74 JAR.

(Janitors above replacement)

No way! The cleaning staff at the HoF have 74 JAR.

Get out of your mother's broom closet and watch them some time. Sheesh.

Shorter Leitch: I enjoyed voting for the HOF back when people who disagreed with me didn't have a platform to express their views.

What I was saying, and maybe (I only speculate) what the writer was feeling was that the internet had spawned a method of dialogue which is harsher and less helpful overall. I mean, BBTF is actually light-years BETTER than reading comments on most of the news sources. 80% of those people just scream their personal biased views at each other and little "light" ever emerges. But even here, and at other places, people sit behind their screens and type things that to them appear self-evident truths, but there sure is a lot of myopia around. As for #7s suggestion, maybe the writer is not so much pining for less openness for others to express views, but a better dialogue.

In the 70s and/or 80s was televised an hour-long debate of sorts hosted by Arthur Miller (the lawyer, not the dancer). It would never see the light of day against all the reality garbage filing most channels today.

As for #7s suggestion, maybe the writer is not so much pining for less openness for others to express views, but a better dialogue.

Better dialogue is of course good - that's what "better" means.

My problem with Leitch is that he seems to be pining for a past that never existed. There's little evidence that the world used to be a place where people solved problems without yelling. In sportswriting and the Hall in particular, greater interest from fans has led to more discussions, and the development of better tools for analyzing baseball has led to greater specificity in these discussions. More discussions, and more discussions with people with more knowledge, will also mean more people being jerks. But then the problem is that you want to improve the future, so that there will be fewer jerks. You don't want to return to the past when people didn't understand baseball as well, and you can't physically return to the past when people lacked the technology to discuss baseball as much.

it’s turning into an endless political debate between two parties who have no interest in taking the slightest step forward toward the other.

Also, the nihilism. The debate has produced some number of immovable objects, but the large majority of voters appear to be almost comically mobile in their views. The progression of players from 30% to 80% has continued just as it always did. The steroid-tarred superstars are heading for 40-50%, which will almost certainly increase over the next few years and should lead to their induction before 2020. I see no evidence whatsoever that the actual process of inducting players to the Hall of Fame has gotten worse - it seems to me it's gotten marginally better as overlooked greats benefit from campaigns to raise recognition and informed fans have a better platform to make and refine their arguments.

The voting process has perhaps become more difficult for voters because they're expected to make arguments and defend positions. That again seems like a plus.