With all that is going on, it’s fair to ask–is the Cardinal Hall of Fame voting still a thing?
You can still vote, so I’m guessing so. The deadline is April 17, which is a week from Friday. And even in the best of times, the end of that voting might be drowned out by the start of the season, the home opener, and everything that goes along with baseball’s return to our lives.
However, the official account (as far as I can tell on Monday afternoon, when I looked) hasn’t put out a tweet about the voting since March 8. (EDIT: Of course, since I wrote this early, they put one out last night.) With a fan base starving for anything Cardinals, you might think they’d push that voting a bit more with everything else being shut down. Instead, they did a bracket of best Cardinal moments (which, in all fairness, is pretty cool itself) and have just let that go by the wayside, it feels like. I’d actually forgotten the ballot was out there until a day or so ago, when I was thinking of Vince Coleman and his induction after reading The Wax Pack.
If you aren’t sure there is going to be baseball, can you afford to plan a HOF ceremony? On the flip side, if you think things might be clear by late August (the ceremony is set for Saturday, August 29), don’t you want to have this ceremony to have something baseball-related? If nothing else, you could have a HOF induction ceremony in a closed Ballpark Village, though hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, and televise it to starving Cardinals fans.
So I am sure that things will go on as scheduled, even as the whole thing is overshadowed by a global pandemic. This could have been a year that would have set a record in voting, though, if the Cards had been a little more proactive about it. Then again, maybe it’ll be a big focus over the last week and everyone will get involved with it then.
Also, I’m still going with Edgar Renteria and Steve Carlton, though I expect this will be the year Keith Hernandez breaks through. Look forward to finding out!