by Annie Eitman

Created on: July 26, 2008

How do players get out of the Baseball Hall of Fame? If they're physically visiting Cooperstown, they can use the exit like everyone else. Other than that, once they're in, they're in.

There is no process for removal. Why? One of the rules of induction is that nominees have to have been retired from baseball for at least five years, essentially ending their career with the game. This hopefully allows enough time to pass to give us a perspective on what the candidate has contributed to the game. Here's the key - people are voted in according to what they've done WITHIN BASEBALL. You can be quite the flawed person, but if you brought something of value to the game, you can be considered for Cooperstown. The thinking is also that your contribution essentially ended when you walked off the field. What you do with your life after that should have no impact on whether you deserve to be in the Hall.

A sports columnist friend once told me about an unwritten rule writers had - if personal issues, such as drinking or domestic problems, didn't affect play on the field, they were not made public. If a player was hung over and still pitched a great game, so be it. But if he showed up late to play because he was fighting with his wife, or left his heat at home next to the bottle, that was cannon fodder for a beat reporter and would end up in print.

Being less than a stellar person shouldn't keep someone out of the Hall. As we saw with Pete Rose, however, what they contribute to baseball can brings highs and lows, sometimes making their road to the Hall a futile one. I would never tell my dad that Walter O'Malley, the man held responsible for moving the Dodgers out of Brooklyn, was inducted this year. Nor would I mention that Mr. O'Malley can never be removed. Yes, it's just my dad's opinion, but I'm holding out hope for some sort of inheritance. No need to irritate the guy.

This makes deciding whether to invite someone into the Hall all the more critical. The people responsible for voting in new members, mainly journalists but also other people in baseball, take their job very seriously.

Baseball is the game of sweet statistics. Swings and misses are boiled down into numbers, all in a race to compare one man to another. Baseball fans like the black and white world offered by statistics numbers don't lie. But things like steroids, corked bats and pine tar drag the game into a messy grey area.

Keep in mind these are only the cheats we're aware of. Sadly, there are most likely others. There will be thrown games no one knew about, corked bats that went undetected, sticky caps on pitchers. Life's not fair, but baseball sure tries to keep the playing field level.

The Hall itself is an amazing place, hallowed ground for baseball fans. In 1839, not far from Cooperstown, Abner Doubleday tweaked a local sandlot game and invented' the game of baseball. Over one hundred and fifty years of the history of American's game, our passion, are on display at its birthplace. Seeing up close the bats and gloves of legends is spine-tingling and not to be missed. You, too, may never want to leave!

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