Help Me Fill Out My IBWAA Hall of Fame Ballot

While perhaps not as popular as our more traditional brethren, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America conducts votes for all the same awards, including the Hall of Fame. Ours is not an invitation to Cooperstown, but I believe it may better represent the more modern sensibilities of baseball fans than the pearl-clutching righteousness of some of those crusty scribes could hope to.

That said, I’d like to call upon some actual baseball fans to help me fill out my ballot. Below, you’ll find a 29-man ballot, of which you can select up to 15 names. Since you’re probably all here as Cubs fans, you may already be familiar with the concept of “vote early, vote often,” but I’ll ask you not to stuff the ballot box. Not that doing so is some great affront to the establishment, but it’s kind of wiping your feet on the carpet of what little propriety I’ve got here.

To that end, I’m building in a small contingency in the event that the voting excludes someone I feel strongly about voting for. You see, the IWBAA allows us to vote for up to 15 candidates, but I’ve limited the poll below to 10 selections. So if, for instance, Barry Lamar Bonds does not appear in the top 10 of the fan voting, I’m circling his name anyway. Besides, I can’t really see myself voting for 10 of these guys anyway, so going with 15 felt a bit disingenuous.

Polls are open.

Note: Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza and Tim Raines have already been honored in previous IBWAA elections, which is why you don’t see their names listed here. Asterisk (*) denotes first year on ballot.