What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Yesterday, font of journalistic integrity and “horrifying diarrhea sludge” Deadspin announced they had purchased a Hall of Fame vote from a BBWAA member/bribed that member to vote the way the site’s readers would like him or her to.

“Fun,” a lot of people seemed to think. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

You mean aside from the creeping stench of outright corruption in the voting process and of one of the few places left that was doing quality investigative sports journalism? Ok, I suppose that’s not enough for some people.

Well, I imagine nobody thought this through very hard. There are ramifications and repercussions coming, people, possibly including but not limited to:

1. Retaliatory voting for Jack Morris, Lee Smith and Don Mattingly
2. Retaliatory non-voting for Tim Raines
3. Flagrant nose-thumbing and intentional jostling of non-BBWAA writers at the upcoming Winter Meetings.
4. Voting Miguel Cabrera for Cy Young and Rookie of the Year next year, in addition to MVP.
5. Daily columns praising Nick Punto’s scrappiness.
6. Banning paragraphs longer than one sentence.
7. Everybody writes at least one article whose headline or first sentence is “WAR, what is it good for?”
8. Sending all the voters who don’t actively cover baseball to our houses to rub it in.
9. Having Jeff Bagwell murdered, and framing Mike Piazza for it.
10. Drawing and quartering public face of sabermetrics Brian Kenny in the public square.

The one good thing it is likely to do is to get Carson Cistulli summarily mustered out of the organization entirely. On second thought, that might make the whole enterprise worth it.