Morris isn't in because he has absolutely no case. Going back to what I said in January:
The only case Jack Morris has for him is a bunch of feel-good platitudes and a single game that was more due to shitty baserunning than anything else. Remove "Game 7" from the equation and what do you have? A decent pitcher who racked up a lot of innings but was never even the best pitcher on his own team, to say nothing of being the best in baseball.
Jim Rice only made it in because he hung around on the ballot a lot longer than anyone expected to, and the Red Sox started a massive PR campaign to get him elected, primarily through Dan Shaughnessy, since they have their arm so far up his ass they can move a finger and make him sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" on command. That's another guy who really doesn't belong -- "most feared hitter," my ass. Barry Bonds was intentionally walked 43 more times in a single season than Jim Rice was in his whole career. J-Rice is 191st in career intentional walks, tied with legends of the game like Geoff Jenkins and Clay Dalrymple, and they didn't even start counting them until the mid-1950s, so there are plenty of more guys that would be ahead of Rice if their numbers weren't lost to time. The most feared hitter of Rice's era was George Brett or Mike Schmidt, not Rice.
The fuck does that have to do with anything?
Let's remember a couple of things: Mandatory drug testing didn't begin in MLB until 2004, meaning until that time, none of these substances people may or may not have been on were banned by baseball. Second, baseball has never been a drug-free sport. Again, as I said, amphetamines were all over baseball as far back as the '50s -- and those do have a confirmed, measurable effect upon player performance, as opposed to steroids.
The BBWAA's position on '90s players is driven by two things: Holding onto this wistful idea of "baseball the way it should have been" (I'm looking at you, Costas, you dumb son of a bitch), and resentment against statistical movements like SABR which they still believe is composed of a bunch of dudes in their mom's basement.
From where I stand, Barry Bonds is the greatest hitter ever to play the game of professional baseball, and for him to be excluded from the Hall of Fame is absurd, particularly given that he never tested positive once in his life and went to court over steroid usage, and got off on everything outside of giving an evasive answer to a grand jury). When it comes to other guys being excluded, it's on a case-by-case basis: Rafael Palmeiro used, but his numbers are nowhere near a Hall of Fame career. Same with Mark McGwire, whose career was entirely too short. What's really bad is that guys like Craig Biggio, who were never linked in any way to steroids, are getting lumped in with guys like McGwire.
And I agree that off-the-field issues shouldn't affect a candidacy; for example, Curt Schilling is a massive piece of shit, but clearly over the line just based on his regular season work, to say nothing of him being the greatest starting pitcher in modern postseason history. That's not wins bullshit or bloody sock voodoo, he's just the best there's been by a pretty wide margin since the deadball era, when the postseason was a much different thing. He has the actual case that dumb people think Jack Morris has.
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