Every year I want to not care about the Hall of Fame vote because of all the faults of the system everyone here knows about. But every year I still get upset when someone does something like leave Greg Maddux off the ballot. One thing I always enjoy is our yearly discussion and vote about the Hall of Fame. Some people here are small hall, and some are big hall, but everyone here seems to be reasonable with their decisions. So why not create our own Hall of Fame?

If there is enough interest, I would like to make this a year-long or so project. Every member of this site would be a potential voter. Going back to the 1800s to start, I would put out a ballot for a certain period of time (say, eligible players from 1900-1902). For a few days, we could discuss the candidacies of players. Then we'd have a private ballot. Finally, an induction post along with plaques courtesy of Hungry Joe.

Here are some ground rules I would propose, subject to change and open to suggestion.

1. I will not use the 10 years in the league criteria, as the ballots could become very large. There will also be no preliminary voting period, which would be cumbersome. Rather, for a given time period, I would list retired players (no 5 year wait needed) who achieved, say, a certain number Wins Above Replacement. That threshold is to be determined, but I was thinking somewhere around 30 WAR. That would leave off guys like Hall of Famers Lloyd Waner, Rolling Fingers, and Bruce Sutter, but would include around 800 players (500 batters, 300 pitchers), including the likes of Kent Hrbek and Rick Sutcliffe. To break it down, that could be about 32 ballots of 25 people per ballot.

2. Every player will be ONE AND DONE. No waiting on the ballot for fifteen years. We either vote the guy in when it's his turn, or we don't. One exception: for guys who receive a certain percentage of the vote (say, forty percent), they would get a second chance at some point. But that's it.

3. No minimum number of votes per ballot.

4. 75% 'yea' to get induction.

5. Ballots will become public unless you otherwise request they remain private.

6. The Hall of Fame plaques will have a touch of WGOM spirit, hopefully with humor on most of them. For example, here's an example plaque if someday we were to elect Drew Butera.

7. I'm ambivalent about the Negro League players, as we don't have a lot of statistics to go by. If people want a special ballot for them, great.

I would love for this to be a celebration of baseball history. I figure we'd learn more about historical players and have some fun with it, too. Perhaps we'd even get a good debate going here or there.

Please comment below on your general interest on the idea, and if you have any recommendations. For example, I would like to hear people's thoughts regarding the threshold for being on the ballot (especially for relievers) and how we'd determine what goes on the plaque. Also, I would like people's thoughts on whether or not they think they could get burned out on the whole process, and how we could best avoid that. For example, two ballots per month would make the project last about a year and a half with the above numbers.