In a way, arent the black sox even better known than 90% of people in the hall of fame, especially with all these passed over guys who get in after they pass away? Career .260 hitters like Santo. What does it really mean anymore?
Just because you're still a household name 110 years later isn't necessarily a good thing. Hitler will be a household name far longer than Roosevelt, DeGaulle or Churchill. Not for being good, but for being infamously evil.
A lot of people can name Mario Mendoza, too, but that doesn't mean he was in any way a baseball player to celebrate or hold up as an example of anything except mediocrity.
Banning players from the HoF, or even the sport, may make them infamous. But that's good. It reminds future generations of players what's at stake when you're tempted to cheat to win, or cheat to line your pockets with ill-gotten payoffs for fixing games. Or are just stupid enough to get in with organized crime gambling figures and, since you're the player/manager and are betting on your own games, aren't playing or managing to win, but to satisfy a crime boss who wants a certain return on his gambling operations.
How many people have had to be bounced from the sport for fixing games in the last 100 years? None? (Rose was never proven to have fixed games, just in the position to be influenced by organized crime via betting on his own team's games, so he doesn't count.) Then maybe the Black Sox need to remain famous/infamous, to keep the sport from being corrupted by faceless and nameless evil men, eh?
-Doug