"Gee, Dad, it's swell that you brought me to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it's empty! No plaques, nothing! What's up with that?"

"You're very observant-ant-ant. Wow, hear that echo? Yes, son, it's empty. A few years ago the writers held their annual vote and no players got elected, because of all the suspected cheating. Since then, nobody's gotten in.

"See, son, voters are told to consider a player's integrity, sportsmanship and character. There was a big furor, and the Hall's board of directors decided to apply that criteria retroactively."

"You mean like they kicked out Babe Ruth for his womanizing and Ty Cobb for playing dirty, stuff like that?"

"Yeah, but what do you know about womanizing?"

"Uh, I get why they booted Ruth and Cobb and those guys, dad, but what about Hank Aaron?"

"Well, Aaron was so clean that the board figured he had to be hiding something."

"Why doesn't baseball just change the instructions to eliminate the integrity and character stuff, since voters couldn't know every player's secrets, and so few great players are model citizens?"

"Baseball doesn't own the Hall, lad. It's owned by a private trust, dating back to the Hall's founder."

"Whoa, that sounds mysterious!"

"Kind of. The trust also owns 10,000 acres around Cooperstown and tons of other property, like the Dakota apartment building in New York."

"Wow, dad, are you saying that if baseball wants to change the Hall's standards and philosophy, it has to go through this big trust? I know how suspicious you are of secretive billionaires."

"There's a HOF board of directors, which includes great ex players, plus Bud Selig, whose photo on the HOF website was taken before the invention of photography. But who knows if the board has any real power? Meaningful change might be difficult."

"Dang! Well, can we go to Niagara Falls, then?"

"They dried up, son. Global warming. Let's just go have a beer."
