BBWAA Controversy
This is getting good.
18 full-time Internet baseball writers were nominated for entry into the BBWAA at the winter meetings this week. The association let in 16, 14 of whom were former members now working for ESPN.com, SI and so on. The two denied admission were both ESPN writers: Rob Neyer and Keith Law. Apparently, they just don’t go to enough baseball games.
You can read all the sordid details over at Baseball Think Factory, primarily in these two threads.
The second features a guest appearance from BBWAA committee member Tracy Ringolsby.
The BBWAA is what it is. Its main purpose is to serve its members by making sure the right people have press box access at Major League parks on a full-time basis. There was no MVP or Cy Young voting when it was created. There was no Hall of Fame, either.
Mostly because I’d love the honor of participating in the Hall of Fame elections, I hope to be considered someday. It’ll be an uphill climb, since I’m not only an Internet writer, but I toil for a fantasy site. The sale to NBC last year was probably a step in the right direction, but I’m not expecting anything anytime soon. Neyer’s entry would definitely seem to open the door for writers like myself and probably those at Baseball Prospectus and such.
That, as much as anything else, could be what the old guard is afraid of. I don’t even blame them. The long-time writers don’t want the press box invaded by a bunch of 25- and 30-year-olds who think they know more about baseball than the guys who have been covering it forever. Change is bad. Still, only a limited number of the next generation of baseball writers are coming up through the newspapers and the percentage will surely continue to decline. There will come a time at which the BBWAA will have to adapt if it still wants to be taken seriously. As open to new ideas as some of the younger members seems to be, I don’t doubt that it will.
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