Custodians of the Game

In the New Year’s edition of the New York Times, Michael Schmidt wrote an interesting article on Rafael Palmeiro and the hall of fame. Naturally, PEDs are a major theme. The topic of how the writers will treat those players from the steroid era – not just those like Palmeiro who were caught, but players like Jeff Bagwell with whom speculation is all the evidence we have – also came up. On that subject, Ross Newhan a former columnist from the LA Times, said the following:

“Somebody said we are not the morality police, but yet I think we are. If we aren’t, who is? Part of our job is that we are custodians of the game’s history. I do look at the larger picture, and Palmeiro had a lot of good years, but that brings back to my feeling that otherwise he would be worthy of the Hall of Fame.”

The merits of Newhan’s viewpoint can be debated – I, for one, stand in the “innocent until proven guilty” court – but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because the image of Ross Newhan as a Custodian of Baseball is funny. See?

What about our favorite blogger, Murray Chass? What would he look like as a custodian of baseball? Probably like this:

Tracy Ringolsby is most famous for his cowboy hat… and his work with a rag and some windex.

Keith Law doesn’t have a hall of fame vote yet, but as a member of the BBWAA, he’s still left with the duty of keeping baseball’s history clean. Still, one would think he could do better than this with his Harvard and Carnegie Mellon education than this…

Hey, keeping our game clean is a tough job. But somebody’s got to do it, right? Luckily, we have these four (and many others!) using their power waxers and preparing their wet floor signs in the metaphorical school building that is the history of baseball!