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" (Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post) Hurrah, sports fans, it&amp;#039;s National Self-Righteousness Day! Somehow, America&amp;#039;s baseball writers have managed to decide which of our retired ballplayers are moral enough deserve to be placed in honored glory in a museum next to wife-beaters, racists, drunkards, whoremongers, segregationists, and murderers. Over at Deadspin, Drew Magary has a fine survey of the rock-strewn landscape of philosophical agony these poor voters have had to traverse to make this horrible choice that ought not to have been forced on any person. As it turns out, I missed my chance to plumb the depths of my ethics. I was a member of the Baseball Writers Association Of America for only three years. If I&amp;#039;d made it to five, I could have voted three years after I was dead. So I was spared the personal Gethsemanes in which so many of my friends and colleagues have had to agonize this year. (I also announced that, in my first year of eligibility, I was going to allow the bartender at my local to fill out my ballot. Why should I be expected to carry this awful burden alone?) Generally, I try to keep my Other Life separate from this one, but there are several sports arguments in which I simply do not choose to engage because they are pointless and stupid and they are open invitations to insufferable blatherskitery. To wit: 1) What does the &amp;quot;Valuable&amp;quot; in Most Valuable Player really mean? (Sorry, Nate. Just don&amp;#039;t care.) 2) Who should win the Heisman Trophy? And, especially, 3) Who should be in Halls Of Fame, especially Baseball&amp;#039;s? But I do not enforce my rules on everyone. So, for today&amp;#039;s hooley down in comments, feel free to argue about the Hall Of Fame, and whether Barry Bonds&amp;#039;s drug use is more of a disqualifier than Ty Cobb&amp;#039;s having beaten a guy half-to-death and having shot a guy entirely to death. Who&amp;#039;s got your vote this year? (Yeah, you can yell about Pete Rose, too. I know that&amp;#039;s inevitable.) Me? I say let &amp;#039;em all in, and then blow up the place and start all over. Play nice, ya bastids, or I&amp;#039;m sending Fay Vincent to your house to bore you to death. UPDATE -- And the Custodians Of The Game have saved it from...something. Nice job, people. Really. Have a cookie. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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