BOWIE FUCKIN' KUHN????

Maybe I don't know how to read, but that article doesn't really say what either Kuhn or Miller did.

Kuhn was the doofus that tried to get Jim Bouton to admit the events of the awesome "Ball Four" weren't true....

oh and he was supposedly racist

The HOF has a knack for honouring people shortly after their death (Kuhn, Buck O'Neill, probably Marvin Miller eventually). Touching.

Wikipedia has a section on racial insensitivity re: Kuhn. I'm not sure of the validity of these claims, so make of it what you will:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowie_Kuhn

So the main argument Kuhn in the HOF is that he presided over baseball during a boom period for the game (attendance, revenues, etc. exploded when he was commish). Is there any correlation there? Similarly, is there any correlation between anything Bud Selig has done and baseball's current success? You KNOW we'll be talking about HOFer Bud Selig in about fifteen years.

I think Beelzebud has a "stronger" case for the HOF than Kuhn. He was the ultimate bystander commish, except he fought to stave off free agency as hard as possible, claiming EVERY team in the AL and all but 4 or 5 in the NL would go under if the reserve clause ended! (never read any racist accusations tho; Monte Irvin, who worked as his ass't for many years, hasn't made any)

Miller's memoir is a great read.

First and foremost: not elevating Marvin Miller is a complete embarrassment, especially when the snub is accompanied by the elevation of the cloddish nonentity Bowie Kuhn, a commissioner whose major accomplishment was being so insensitive, so deaf to the prevailing winds that he soured management's relations with the players for all time. This is a bit like building a monument to Richard Nixon on the national mall before you do one for John Adams, James Madison, or Batman. An objective reading of Kuhn's record reveals a man obsessed with protecting his own non-existent prerogatives but rarely succeeding. He certainly wasn't well-respected in his time. Bud Selig, for all the abuse he sometimes takes, is praised far more often than Kuhn ever was.

http://www.yesnetwork.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071203&content_id=1434512&oid=36019&vkey=6

Mike (Atlanta): Now that logjam of O'Malley and others has been cleared, which current GMs/owners do you see having a shot at the Hall of Fame down the road? Steinbrenner seems a lock on the owners side. Maybe John Schuerholz on the GM side. Dave Dombrowski? And I know Bud Selig will go in one way or another. As long they don't but Ueberroth in, I'll be OK.

Christina Kahrl: I'm one of those people who wants to go all Cheka on the Hall of Fame, especially on the execs side of things, and purge a few dozen guys. Charlie Comiskey? Bowie Kuhn? These guys did terrible things to the industry...

Setting that aside, Steinbrenner, Schuerholz, Dombrowski, Selig, and Marvin Miller will all belong. The way things are going in Boston, I'm not going to be surprised if we're talking about John Henry in twenty or thirty years.

where's the outrage?

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, December 4, 2007 1:21 PM bookmarkflaglink

I AM OUTRAGED THAT I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT RAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHGFJKDGSKFJHGL;

― The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall, Tuesday, December 4, 2007 1:45 PM bookmarkflaglink

The best--the only--argument for Kuhn in the HOF is the maxim "May you live in interesting times" (or "may you be commissioner in interesting times"). He did, and he was. Often they were interesting because of something he'd mismanaged.