Baseball's Morality Police

Craig Calcattera at Hardball Talk has an excellent response to the LA Times' Ross Newhan's view of the role of the Hall of Fame voter:

“Somebody said we are not the morality police, but yet I think we are. If we aren’t, who is? Part of our job is that we are custodians of the game’s history.”

Calcattera:
The Hall of Fame is not heaven, my fellow baseball writers, you are not St. Peter at the gate, and no one — not even Jose Canseco — has written baseball’s book of life. Have a sense of humility about you. Understand that your role is not to be baseball’s moral arbiters, writ-large. You are to look at one player at a time and judge him accordingly. If you have nothing negative to say about him, and if his accomplishments are sufficient, vote him in.

Lovely!