Hall of Fame Week!

If you’re a constant reader of The Hardball Times, you may know that from time to time we like to run with themes. Some come in the form of author series, like Bruce Markusen’s “Card Corner Plus” or John Paschal’s “The Screwball,” and Stacey Gotsulias’ “Random Box Scores” may be a burgeoning theme. We’ll see. Sometimes, they come in the form of theme weeks. In the past, we’ve done “10 Lessons Week,” “10 Wishes for the new Commissioner,” and the always prescient “Season Preview Week.” To these theme weeks, we now add “Hall of Fame Week.”

In a normal year, devoted baseball fans are into the Hall of Fame ballot. And these are no normal years. The collateral damage of just Barry Larkin being voted in to the Hall in the 2012-2013 voting period is that the Hall of Fame ballot is now clogged with qualified and over-qualified candidates. So we thought we’d devote an entire week to what is fast becoming one of the most interesting baseball events. As we usually do, we have a special logo for the week that was designed for us by Howell Media Solutions, whom you should hire if you need graphic design work:

We don’t just have a logo, though; we also have a lineup for the week. Take a look. Also, note that I’ll update these with their proper links once they post each day:

• Mon., Dec. 14: Brad Harris, “A Course Correction for Cooperstown”
• Tue., Dec. 15: Corinne Landrey, “One Last Time: The Hall of Fame Case for Mark McGwire”
• Wed., Dec. 16: Nathaniel Rakich, “The Hall of Fame’s Bullpen Problem”
• Thu., Dec. 17: Jonah Pemstein, “How’d He Make the Ballot?”
• Fri., Dec. 18: Adam Darowski, “The Standards of Today Would Create a Very Different Hall of Fame”

It’s a diverse list of topics and a group of writers we were excited to work with. As an added bonus, we’ll have a post on or around the ballot reveal date in January from Graham Womack, who is busy cooking up something special as well.

Here at THT, we love themes, and we hope you’ll find our Hall of Fame Week theme to be a winning one!