As the holidays and my 36th birthday rapidly approach, I want to take the time to thank everybody who responded to my three-part series on the Hall of Fame at Baseball Prospectus and my little brush with the mainstream media. The response was the biggest in the three years I’ve been evaluating the Hall ballot for BP, and it was overwhelmingly positive. A couple of readers even took the time to write the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s Gene Collier, as I had done. Speaking of which, a version of my letter is featured in today’s sports mailbag.

Collier did take the time to respond, and did so with a disarming sarcasm in which he agreed with my assessment of his intellectual capacity, referring to himself various times as an idiot, a moron, and a neanderthal. He also claimed the omission of the word “here” was inadvertent, something I still don’t buy since his reply continued to paint me as advocating a Hall of Fame dictated entirely by statistics. Since I didn’t ask permission to rerun the letter, I can’t do so. But I did reply to him once more, in a slightly more conciliatory fashion. Here’s the conclusion:

If you enjoy Baseball Prospectus, you’re probably aware that all of us at BP (including the 90% of that bunch who’s smarter and more experienced than me) would probably run over our own grandmothers at home plate for the right to vote for the Hall. Currently, the best we can hope for is that somebody out there with a vote is paying enough attention to reexamine some of their closely-held assumptions about the game in light of our work. I hope that by the next time you get an opportunity to cast a ballot, you will have taken that message to heart.

Ninety percent? I’ll admit that was a wild-assed guess rather than one derived from an advanced metric in my spreadsheet. Anyway, continuing with the postal theme, a couple of my replies to readers are featured in the most recent BP mailbag. And if you’re disappointed you didn’t get to read the articles because they were behind the subscription wall, I’ll pass on a suggestion that you can take advantage of BP’s gift subscription system to get a discount for that special someone (“Aw, honey, you shouldn’t have”). It’s not too late!

Since blogging is likely to be light over the next few days, I’ll close with a pointer to my hoary annual piece on the sixty-odd players, including Rickey Henderson, who share my December 25 birthday. I swear, that thing is getting as long in the tooth as I am, but the chance to update it always sneaks up on me, and this year there was no freakin’ way I could even begin to touch it. I’m not sure Willy Taveras, one of the two Xmas-born players to have debuted since my last update, has earned a spot on the team yet, but he’s getting closer.

If you’re hungry for an updated take on these players, my BP colleague Jim Baker gives you just that. And speaking of anniversaries of a sort, the gifted Alex Belth has a new piece up at SI.com, this one recounting the 30th anniversary of the Messersmith-McNally decision which led to free agency.

I’m off to SLC through the new year, but hopefully I’ll be checking in from time to time. Happy holidays and safe travels to you all.