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Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA)

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Organization

The Resume

    (October 14, 1908- )
    Born in Detroit, Michigan
    Formed to assure clubhouse and press-box access for sportswriters
    Members vote annually for the MVP, Cy Young Award, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year
    Writers with 10 or more years of membership are eligible to vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame

Why they might be annoying:

    As of 2014, they refuse to let broadcasters and SABRmetricians in as members.
    Lifetime members are allowed to vote for the Hall of Fame even if they stopped covering the game decades ago.
    There is often someone who sends in a blank ballot as a protest -- and those empty ballots count, making it tougher for players to reach the 75% threshold for election.
    Many members insist on drawing distinctions between players who are worthy of being 'Hall of Famers' vs 'first ballot Hall of Famers.'
    Due to a combination of a large number of strong candidates and controversy over how to handle players from the steroid era, they elected no one to the Hall of Fame in 2013.
    Many of the writers who piously declare they cannot possibly vote someone who took steroids into the Hall of Fame turned a blind eye back when the abuse was happening.
    Dan Le Batard of ESPN and the Miami Herald was stripped of his Hall of Fame voting rights after letting the readers of Deadspin.com fill out his ballot (2014).
    However, that same year BBWAA Vice-President Jose de Jesus Ortiz invited his readers to join him at a Mexican restaurant 'to discuss the ballot and fill it out together,' adding, 'Ever since I earned my first ballot, I vowed to always fill it out with the help and guidance of the readers who know as much and sometimes even more about the history of the game.'

Why they might not be annoying:

    They decided to let internet-based writers join (2008).
    To promote transparency, they began posting the full voting results for their annual awards on their webpage (2012).
    Bill James, an advocate for broadening the pool of Hall of Fame voters, admitted, 'For the most part, the BBWAA has done an extremely good job with a difficult task.... I agree with 90 percent of the selections and 99 percent of the rejections, and there are no selections that I strongly disagree with.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 83 Votes: 59.04% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 146 Votes: 65.07% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 16 Votes: 56.25% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 10460 Votes: 72.04% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 1023 Votes: 96.09% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 392 Votes: 89.03% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 10 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 74 Votes: 44.59% Annoying