I think 50 is an overstatement, but JPod raises an excellent point — and one that can’t be answered definitively, which makes it eternal fun for baseball fans. Some of the writers who vote on the Hall of Fame say there is an objective standard of greatness that you have to maintain … except they can’t really define it (much like one Supreme Court justice’s famous definition of obscenity being “I know it when I see it). Others think it’s fine to play the game of “if X guy is in, then Y guy has to make it … even if, in retrospect, maybe X guy shouldn’t be in.” That necessarily means more players who don’t really deserve it get in over time.