A Frick-ing mistake where Morgan is concerned

The Baseball Hall of Fame is so messed up at this point, it's not even worth trying to fix it.

It was bad enough that the management arm of the Veterans Committee voted in Walter O'Malley and Bowie Kuhn this week ahead of Marvin Miller, who got only 25 percent of the vote, not even close to the 75 percent necessary.

As the man who moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, O'Malley's main credentials for enshrinement are that he's the butt of two of the best jokes in baseball history.

The first concerned New York newspaper writers Jack Newfield and Pete Hamill, who one day in a bar sat down to compare lists of the worst three human beings of the 20th century. Their choices proved identical: Hitler, Stalin and Walter O'Malley. That in turn produced the Brooklyn joke: You're in a room with Hitler, Stalin and Walter O'Malley, and you have a gun with two bullets. Who do you shoot? Answer: O'Malley, twice, to make sure he's dead.

As for Kuhn, he was one of the most ineffectual and dunderheaded leaders of a major sports league in the 20th century. Only among baseball commissioners -- a fraternity famed for spineless hypocrisy -- does he stand out at all. Along the way, he got spanked by Miller in every set of negotiations between players and owners.

Voting Kuhn in ahead of Miller is like voting in Sherm Lollar ahead of Mickey Mantle or Jack Billingham ahead of "Catfish" Hunter -- not to go too far back into ancient baseball history, but hey, I have to remain in the ranks of the Hall of Fame-eligible.

Even so, that wasn't the worst of it, not where Your Friendly Neighborhood Sports Media Columnist is concerned.

This week Cooperstown also released the final ballot for the Ford C. Frick Award honoring broadcasters. The 10 finalists include three voted in by online fan balloting: Joe Nuxhall, Bill King and -- either finish that swallow of coffee before reading any further or outfit everyone else in the room with raingear -- Joe Morgan.

That's right, Joe Morgan. The egotistical curmudgeon who insisted Ryne Sandberg wasn't a Hall of Famer … who defends the legacy of the Big Red Machine the way the Miami Dolphins defend their perfect 1972 season … whose generation played baseball better than any other … and who gives Tim McCarver a run for being the biggest gasbag color analyst in a baseball broadcast booth.

Morgan is in the Hall of Fame -- as a player, which is the only way he has any business being anywhere near Cooperstown, N.Y. So how did this happen?

The Reds' Nuxhall benefited from his recent death to go in on a groundswell of sentimentality with 82,304 votes. King, the A's longtime announcer, died in 2005, so ditto, although he gathered just 7,659. With 6,065, Morgan must have rode in on Nuxhall's coattails, as each voter was allowed 3 votes, and Red rooters must have picked him to fill out their choices.

There is no other rational explanation, although this being the Baseball Hall of Fame rationality has nothing to do with it. So thank you, Cincinnati, the town that got fan voting stopped once before, in 1957, when it elected Reds to every position but first base in the All-Star Game. The Commissioner who stepped in to remake the lineup on that occasion? Ford C. Frick.

In any case, the bumper sticker on my car reads: Don't blame me, I voted for Pat Hughes, Steve Stone and Jon Miller.