Alomar to the Hall?

This is perhaps one of the most ridiculous debates currently in baseball. Is Roberto Alomar a Hall of Famer? Is the sky blue? Did Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire take steroids? Okay, he spit on a guy. Big mistake. But it's not like he followed him home, forced his way into his house, and spit on his wife and kids too. In fact, Hirschbeck (the guy) considers Alomar a friend (see here for part of why).

More importantly, there are far worse people in the Hall. Everyone knows Ty Cobb owned slaves (or at least really wanted to), but no one doubts whether he should belong in the hall. The Hall is about greatness in the sport and numbers, the type of person you are should not come into consideration. Certainly the members of the same journalistic group (hey baseball writers of America) who turned a blind eye to an obvious steroids epidemic in the late 90s while it helped repopularize baseball and keep them employed only to hypocritically condemn the 'roiders and baseball when it became popular to do so should not be in charge of making moral judgments against HOF candidates.

Anyone who watched Alomar play throughout the 90s was treated to nothing less than art on the baseball field. What Alomar could do at second base was unmatched. When he went to Cleveland to team up with Omar Vizquel, the baseball universe collectively pissed itself it was so uncontrollably overjoyed. I realize sports writers need at least one HOF ballot controversy per year, and Alomar is the only player that presents a real opportunity to manufacture a controversy, but it is completely stupid to suggest that Alomar should be kept out of the hall because he spit on a guy once.

If he had taken PEDs then you could legitimately not vote for him, since his on-field accomplishments would be suspect. But if you think he was a jerk, that's not enough. There's probably about 3 or 4 professional athletes in history who are not complete walking cocks. These guys have pretty much everything handed to them from their teenage years on. They are not likeable guys. You think Tiger Woods is a jerk because he cheated on his wife with just about any blonde he could get his hands on? You're wrong. He's a jerk because he's a pro athlete, and these people are the walking definition of entitlement. Alomar spit on a guy. As far as being a jerk goes, that's not even that high on the scale. If guys like Gwynn, Henderson, and Ripken Jr. didn't get in unanimously, Alomar won't. But he should definitely be in on the first ballot like the rest of those guys. He was every bit as great as, and relative to his position probably greater than, any of those guys.