Booth: Today’s case study: Let’s define a baseball Hall of Famer?

Or as Jeff Bagwell put it the other day…“I can’t believe that we were the only generation that didn’t have good players. It’s a little unfair that that is how people think.”

Maybe it’s just a by-product of the crankiness of the times. We’re adrift in an era that much favors whimpering and whining about everything. But as never before, gripes mount not just about who does or does not get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame – we’ve always had that – but the process itself; who votes and why and whether they are qualified or even sincere. It’s getting nasty.

As it happens this year’s batch of freshly minted immortals – Whitey Herzog, Doug Harvey and Andre Dawson – are all to varying degrees “borderlines.” That’s a nice way of saying that maybe more people think they don’t belong in Cooperstown than think they do.

Defining your terms is the preferential option in any meaningful discussion but it doesn’t come easily in this one. No one has ever concocted a reasonable definition of a “Hall of Famer.” The no-brainers are no problem. But how many of them do you have? Maybe 10-12 per generation? Would a pantheon restricted to the Ruths, Groves, and Aarons of the game engage and charm us as much as the one we now have, which also finds room for Goose Goslin, Richie Ashburn, and Bill Veeck?

Some, apparently, would prefer more exclusivity. But the sheer worship of near perfection can get rather boring. Moreover, the more you restrict the ranks of the elect, the more you end up gnashing your teeth over infinitesimal degrees of greatness. How much of a distinction might you divine between the worthiness of Honus Wagner and Napoleon Lajoie?