Rox Pile’s Hall of Fame Ballot Series: Part Seven

Editor’s Note: We here at Rox Pile have all decided to make our own Hall of Fame ballots since the results of the real Hall of Fame ballots will be released on Wednesday. We started with editor/co-expert Noah Yingling’s hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot and followed with contributor Brady Vernon’s ballot, contributor Ryan Ladika’s ballot, contributor Olivia Greene’s ballot, contributor Luke Mullins’s ballot, and contributor JD Jensen’s ballot. 

Today, we feature the ballot of another one of our contributors, Christian Espinoza.

First, I want to address the elephant in the room. Do players that have taken (or allegedly taken) performance enhancing drugs deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? As a person that has watched or played baseball over the years, I used to take a hard stance. If you cheat, you don’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, your records get asterisks, etc. However, as I was doing some research for this article, I was enlightened looking over the list of the existing players in the Hall. I discovered that while there are great, even legendary, players in the Hall of Fame, there are some of those players who aren’t particularly ‘clean’ either. Rumors, allegations, and often known facts of alcoholics, drug addicts, racists, domestic abusers…the list goes on and on.

Thankfully, this article is not an attempt to tackle the morality of baseball players. Nor, is it an attempt to debate the responsibility of Hall of Fame voters to act as the moral police for these legendary players. As I read the debate amongst fellow writers and baseball fans, the overall tone seems to be…the best players of their respective eras deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. So, to follow that theme, I have made eight of the ten allotted votes for my mock Hall of Fame ballot. Here is a brief look at my Hall of Fame picks with a few notes on their individual performance.