Is anyone here familiar with the name Dan Szymborski? Does anybody know Dan Szymborski? Has anyone ever spoken to or communicated in any way with Dan Szymborski? Does anyone know why Dan Szymborski hates me?

I never heard the name Dan Szymborski until very recently. I had no idea who Dan Szymborski was. In truth, I didn’t know if his name was Dan Szymborski or Dan Szymbobski. But my grandson enlightened me.

My grandson scans the Internet much more than I do. He knows a lot more than I do, especially about web sites and digital dandies. When I asked him if he knew who Dan Szymborski was, he filled me in. Dan Szymborski, he informed me, though he didn‘t use the term – I have made it up and applied it to Dan Szymborski – is a digital dandy.

Dan Szymborski has written for ESPN.com, which used to have more class than to have Dan Szymborski write for its web site. Dan Szymborski, my grandson further told me, came up with some cockamamie (again, my word) mathematical formula – yeah, one of those – by which he concocts player performance projections.

I don’t know what his system is – believe me, I don’t want to know – but presumably it prompted him to write an article for ESPN.com that produced the headline “Mike Mussina one of the casualties of a broken HOF voting process.”

It was that headline that introduced me to Dan Szymborski. It was that headline that silently – or maybe it wasn’t so silent – prompted me to say. “Oh no, not another one” and provided me with the reason for this column.

However, before I address Mussina and the so-called “broken” process for voting for the Hall of Fame, I need to explain why I am writing about Szymborski.

In telling me who Szymborski is, my grandson informed me that Szymborski has made it an obsession – my word – to write about me. My wife wouldn’t spend as much time writing about me as Szymborski has. He has done it via Twitter, that modern-day digital system of communication that has contributed to the demise of journalism and social conversation.

I had not seen his comments about me because unlike Szymborski, I do not use Twitter. I leave tweeting to the twits. But my grandson researched Szymborski’s comments and came up with these:

• That he was *ever employed as a journalist is just embarrassing.
• Murray Chass hired to be on next ‘Survivor’ but it turns out to be just a ruse to leave him on an abandoned Pacific island. #2014hopes
• And yes, Murray Chass was given a Spink award. Which is like Jenny McCarthy getting the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
• Murray Chass is the Donald Trump of baseball journalism. That may actually be too unfair to *Trump*.
• Some of the bad sportswriters can at least claim to be decent *writers*. Chass writes like a third-grader.
• Every spink award winner except chass should get a second one. insulting to tell writers they are of equal honor to murray chass.

It would be easy to respond to these irrational ravings, but I’ll let Szymborski’s goofy remarks speak for themselves and I’ll move on to the real subject of this column, which is the silliness that surrounds voting for the Hall of Fame. It’s a timely topic because the Hall this week announces the results of this year’s writers’ voting.

Ken Griffey Jr. is expected to be elected with an overwhelming percentage, perhaps as high as 99. I also expect Mike Piazza to be elected following his 69.9 percent showing last year unless in the interim year a sizeable number of writers accepted the circumstantial evidence that indicates he used performance-enhancing drugs until baseball began testing for them.

Also to be looked for:

* Can Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens break the 40 percent barrier in their fourth year on the ballot (75 percent needed for election)?

* Can Sammy Sosa, also in his fourth year, survive for a fifth year after receiving only 6.6 percent of the votes last year (5 percent is required to stay on the ballot)?

* Will what I call the full-ballot movement among the writers affect the election results?

* Will the application of analytics – the loftily labeled monster metrics – influence the outcome?

In the nearly 45 years I have been eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame, the most peculiar development I have seen is the growing movement to erase completely the limit of 10 players writers can vote for or failing that, an increase in the maximum number.

I don’t get it. What kind of standards can my colleagues have if they want to elect 12 or 15 or even 10 players whom they believe were good enough to merit plaques in the Cooperstown shrine? I voted for one player this year, Griffey. I thought there were some other good players on the ballot of 32 but no other great ones. I believe only the great ones belong.

Last year I voted for the three players who received the most votes – Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz. I did not vote for Craig Biggio, who was also elected, because I had heard too much from respected sources about his alleged use of PEDs and I don’t vote for players who have allegedly cheated.

Other writers have their own ideas on the PED issue; they are entitled to have them and act on them. I have greater question about the full-ballot voters. I asked Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association, about the growing trend toward maximum voting. His e-mailed reply:

Last year, 280 of 549 voters (51.0%) used all 10 slots on the ballot. The year before, the figure was 50.4% based on 288 of 571. In 2013, 23 percent voted for 10 (don’t have the breakdown, unfortunately). The only other year in my time conducting elections (since 1994) that 20 percent of the voters used all 10 slots was in 1999 (exactly 20%), the year that Nolan Ryan, George Brett and Robin Yount were first-ballot electees.

I have been told that in the early days of voting when everyone who ever played was under consideration a majority of ballots had 10 players named, but that was before names were on the ballots and writers were just instucted to write down up to 10 names. Ballots did not contain names until sometime in the 1950s.

The full-ballot movement as you call it began about five years ago. The major proponents early on were Jim Caple (Seattle) and Jayson Stark (Philadelphia). Other vocal proponents have been Buster Olney (New York), C. Trent Rosecrans (Cincinnati), Lynn Henning (Detroit) and Tim Brown (Los Angeles).

A BBWAA committee studying Hall of Fame voting that was chaired by Susan Slusser (San Francisco) and included current BBWAA president Derrick Goold (St. Louis) proposed to the Hall that the number be raised from 10 to 12, but the Hall’s board of directors did not act on the proposal.

The board didn’t only decline to act but also offered a non sequitur of an explanation. In a letter to O’Connell, President Jeff Idelson said the board in the past two years had made two rules changes and “feels that the BBWAA should give the process some time, and then evaluate it.”

One rules change reduces a player’s eligibility on the writers’ ballot from 15 years to 10. The other change reduces the electorate by eliminating voters who have not covered baseball for 10 years on a regular basis. From what I see, the changes have nothing to do with the desire to raise the maximum from 10 to 12.

Nevertheless the Hall board did not succumb to BBWAA’s desire to make an unnecessary change in the voting format. Idelson said board deliberations are confidential and not made public so I don’t know why it resisted a change in the maximum. I would guess, though, that the directors said there was no reason to eliminate or raise the maximum.

The full-ballot voters, on the other hand, haven’t given up. In fact, it appears they are just getting started. They are growing in numbers, and their views have filled the Internet in the weeks leading to the announcement of the 2016 election results.

They proudly post their ballots in their blogs, and many of them would list 12 or 15 names if they were allowed. But 10 will have to suffice for now.

What really bothers me is writers whom I have respected for their coverage are among the full-ballot voters. How can you cover baseball for years and think all of the players you mark on the ballot are worthy of the Hall of Fame? Standards, gentlemen, standards. Re-evaluate your standards.

One of the full-ballot voters, Richard Justice of MLB.com, quoted Joe Torre recently: “It’s the Hall of Fame. It’s not supposed to be easy to get into.” However, by voting for 10 players, Justice and the others are making it far easier for unworthy players to break through the Hall’s doors.

“I see a backlog of deserving candidates.” Justice wrote. “On the other hand, I have peers who say just the opposite is true.”

Other voters have also written about a backlog. I see no backlog. I see no qualified players who are knocking at the door and can’t get in. For years, I did see one. I was a huge supporter of Jack Morris to the bitter end, but not enough voters saw what I saw. His high earned run average and the monster metrics got Morris.

During his career, if I had to pick a pitcher to pitch Game 7 of the World Series, it would have been Morris. Oh, that’s right. Morris did pitch Game 7 of the 1991 World Series for Minnesota, and he pitched all 10 innings against Atlanta and won 1-0.

Too many voters rejected Morris, but now many of them are stumping for two other pitchers, Curt Schilling and Mussina, neither of whom has gained an ‘X’ on my ballot or nearly enough votes for election. In two years on the ballot Mussina hasn’t reached 25 percent, and in three years Schilling hasn’t made it to 40 percent.

Yet the analytics computers spit out statistics for them and others that lead to these Internet headlines:

“By the numbers: HOF case for Mussina”

“4 former stars deserve more Hall love/Schilling, Mussina, Trammell, Raines not getting support careers warranted”

“Why a Hall of Fame vote for Tim Raines is a vote for analytics, too”

“Why every HOF voter should cast a vote for Raines”

Critics aside, no other sport’s hall of fame receives the attention, discussion and debate that the baseball Hall of Fame commands. In fact, there is probably more written in a week about the baseball hall than is written in a year about the other halls.

There is nothing wrong with debate. I have no problem with someone disagreeing with me. Rational, civilized people don’t have a problem with disagreement. Take these headlines, for example:

“Schilling belongs in Hall, Hoffman doesn’t … and it’s not close”

“Hall will eventually come calling for Hoffman”

Those headlines represent opposite points of view on one of the best closers in history, Trevor Hoffman, and there is no right and wrong. It’s a subjective matter. The problem posed by the metrics monsters is that in their fantasy world there are not two sides. There is only one side, and it’s theirs.

This column will only incite further derogatory remarks about the writer, but someone has to tell what these geniuses are about.

They are arrogant, narrow minded and shallow. It means nothing to them that human beings play the game. They don’t talk to the people who play the game. They don’t need to. They have their computers and their statistical formulas, and they don’t have to emerge into the world where the sun shines on day games and the ball park lights illuminate night games.

They especially detest baseball writers and the Baseball Writers Association of America, in large part, I believe, because we vote for the Hall of Fame and MVP and Cy Young awards and they don’t. I offer evidence of their view in the form of an online article I came across in my research for this column.

Written nearly two years ago by Luis Torres, a name unknown to me, it is titled “The Biggest Enemies of the Advancement of Baseball (Part 1): The BBWAA.” An excerpt, faulty grammar included:

The BBWAA are masters at creating narratives that obscure the facts. As long as they continue to do so, we will need to educate the public on what they’re doing so that they can learn to see right through it. Then the analytical writers of the world will be unhindered in elevating the public’s understanding of baseball. It WILL happen. One day, we will look back at the AL MVP voting and other injustices caused by the BBWAA, and shake our heads. Those writers that chose obstinacy over progression? History will judge them poorly, possibly even ridicule them. Just look at Murray Chass right now. As Dan Szymborski put it, he has declined into self-parody. They had the information at hand, and chose to ignore it. Fans today have access to a virtually endless supply of information and data on baseball. The writers know that we can do better than them, and they’re scared of becoming obsolete. After all, if the public figures out that their insider knowledge isn’t worth anything, what good will they be?

With the additional thought that it sounds frighteningly like an ISIS polemic threatening to take over the world, I rest my case.