Why Do The Oscars Stink? Because They’re Not For Us

The Academy Awards and the National Baseball Hall of Fame have something in common: the Oscars stink and so does Cooperstown.

On Tuesday morning, the list of nominees for the 96th Academy Awards was announced. The big story? Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Barbie. Ironically, Margot Robbie was snubbed in the Best Actress Category and Greta Gerwig was snubbed for Best Director. It's as if the powers that be in the Academy completely missed the overarching theme of Barbie: that women in our society are too often overlooked and how their work isn't valued in the same way that a man's is.

So what the hell does that have to do with the National Baseball Hall of Fame? I'll tell you.

As the internet reacted to the Oscar news on Tuesday afternoon, the Hall of Fame announced its Class of 2024. As has been the case in recent years, the announcement was more about who didn't get in than who did, although congrats are indeed in order for Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer, and Todd Helton.

If you're not familiar with the process, the Hall of Fame ballot is voted on annually by a panel of members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. A number of BBWAA panelists are notorious for changing who they vote for from year to year, then changing it back again. It's borderline parody, and the entire process makes very little sense, logically. Just ask poor Trevor Hoffman.

Are you making the connection yet? It's not just that people are upset at the Oscars and the Hall of Fame. It's why they're upset.

Both of these storied institutions, once upon a time, had a sense of gravitas. If a picture or an actor won an Oscar, you knew it was a top shelf film or an all-time-great performance. And if a player was enshrined in Cooperstown, you knew they were one of the best to ever set a cleated foot on the diamond.

This is no longer the case. The Academy and the Hall of Fame no longer exist to reward greatness. They exist as a means to justify the whims of a small subset of people who are ancillary to their respective industries. The Academy doesn't reward the actors and films that cinefiles and movie buffs love. The Hall of Fame doesn't reward the players that baseball fans love. They did, once upon a time. And they still should! But they don't anymore.

So what are we as movie fans and baseball fans to do? It's simple: just stop paying attention. Your eyeballs and your time are some of the most valuable currency you have. The Oscars stink, so don't watch the ceremony this year. And don't read the blatherings of some out-of-touch sportswriter trying to explain the reasoning behind why this steroid-tainted player got their Hall of Fame vote but this other steroid-tainted player did not.

Make this piece that I've written the last piece of Oscar or Hall of Fame content you click on. Band together with other fans to banish both institutions to irrelevance. And maybe, once they've seen their engagement plummet lower than Elon Musk's $44 billion dollar X (which is now worth $19 billion--less than half of what he paid for it--lol), they'll wake up and reimagine their respective shrines into something for us, the fans.

With the announcement yesterday that Red Sox legend David Ortiz will be enshrined in Cooperstown this summer, let's look at the other Hall of Fame Sox.

I've assembled a team of a dozen Baseball Hall-of-Famers who all went into the Hall with Sox caps on their plaques. Scroll through the lineup, vote for your favorite below, then yell at me on Facebook or Twitter for leaving Lefty Grove and Herb Pennock off the list.

Oh, and all of the images of the Hall of Fame plaques below are courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame official online store. You can buy 'em in postcard-form for only 99 cents!