Bias against Blyleven
Regarding the former pitcher's case for making the Hall of Fame, covered at SoCal Sports Observed:
IMHO, Bert Blyleven hasn’t been voted into the Hall because he was a curveball pitcher. The writers love fastball pitchers. If you look at all the pitchers (contemporaries) he is compared to in the story – they are all fastballers. Marichal, Drysdale, Gibson, Jenkins, Hunter, Roberts, Feller, Koufax, Clemens, and Maddux – all fastballers.
I think it’s another case of discrimination against curveballers... ;-)
Of course Blyleven was and is both a smart guy and a smart ass. The baseball writers could be peeved that he’s not properly respectful of their position of intellectual superiority.
Dan O'Donnell