When you spend the better part of eight years closely monitoring, analyzing and summarizing a process, it becomes a little surreal when you are finally inserted it, no matter the level of anticipation.
Inside the very official-looking, color-printed envelope from the Baseball Hall of Fame addressed to me, I find a ballot, voting information and a self-addressed return envelope for my ballot. Yes, snail mail is still being used, perhaps fittingly by a collection of mostly middle-aged baseball writers. Staring at the ballot and names, the idea that I’m now an official voter in the Baseball Hall of Fame became very real.