Keith Olbermann tells baseball to close Hall of Fame, start over

As usual this time of the year, baseball fans and pundits are spending time thinking about whether the Hall of Fame voting system is broken and how to fix it. Soon enough, pitchers and catchers will report for spring training and we’ll stop worrying about this, but for now, the Hall of Fame process remains a hot topic.

Here at Yahoo Sports, our own Tim Brown, a longtime Hall of Fame voter, wrote an insightful column about why he didn’t cast a ballot this year. Simply, he chose not to contribute to the outrage cycle. That’s one way baseball people (Buster Olney didn’t vote either) are reacting to the annual Hall of Fame hang-wringing. 

ESPN commentator Keith Olbermann, very much a baseball fan, has another reaction. Shut down the Hall of Fame, he says, and start all over. In the rant above, Olbermann describes the Hall of Fame as “beyond repair” and jabs, “It makes the judges in a Mickey Rourke boxing match look legitimate.”

It’s a radical idea that will never happen, but OK, Keith, we see your point (and we see you jamming your thumb in the eye of the establishment). 

For Olbermann this isn’t so much about the players who didn’t get votes this year and the odd agendas of voters (i.e. Pedro was a “punk”). It was also very much about everything voters have gotten wrong in the past — from Gil Hodges to Luis Tiant not getting in.

And for you people who will dive into the comments to say Pete Rose should be allowed back into baseball, Olbermann agrees with you. Don’t miss this rant from August on the topic.

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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz