Hall votes need to be transparent

No sports media group holds more power than the Baseball Writers of America.

They decide the Cy Young, MVP, Rookies of the Year and hold the legacies of every player in their hands with their Baseball Hall of Fame votes every year.

And no group has as many curmudgeons. There are writers who must never vote for anybody, part of a group that has never voted anybody into the Hall unanimously. Jackie Robinson received just 77.5 percent in 1962, which is embarrassingly low and showed that some of the baseball writers a generation ago had racist tendencies. Even Willie Mays only received 94.7 percent of the vote in his first year of eligibility, which is ridiculous. Rickey Henderson, the all-time leader in stolen bases and runs scored, was voted in by 94.8 percent, which is still too low. Was Henderson a better player than Willie Mays or Jackie Robinson? Hardly.

And those guys all made it their first year. Others aren't as fortunate, and after 12 years of getting the shaft from the voters, 287-game winner Bert Blyleven voiced some frustration.

"It's not right," said Blyleven, now a Minnesota Twins broadcaster, who needs to add 67 votes in the next three years to make it to Cooperstown. "I considered myself a great competitor, and all of a sudden, you are dictated [whether you go] into the Hall of Fame by writers that never played the game. I always had trouble with that."

As a group, I think the baseball writers do a decent job. (Disclosure: I'm no longer eligible to be a member.) The writers I know do a lot of homework when they vote. They debate the merits of every candidate with each other, and some of the best are transparent with their votes every year, so their readers can weigh in as well. If some of these writers were held accountable for their stupid votes, maybe some of their goofy trends (such as holding back votes in his first year of eligibility, etc.) would become extinct.