Honoring the fallen

Harold Baines - 28 votes, 4.8% of the casted ballots.

I'm sorry Steve.

(Spittin' McGee got the third highest vote total in history though - isn't that nice?)

Hall of Stupidity

Pat Gillick is in the Hall of Fame, Marvin Miller is not.

The Hall of Fame really doesn't mean anything anymore. Not after this.

Sigh.

Joe Gordon is in the Hall of Fame.

Ron Santo is not.

I've gone through the feelings of confusion, anger and outrage already. It seems like I go through it every single year, to be honest. You know what? I'm not congratulating Joe Gordon on his election. Joe Gordon has been dead for thirty years. Ron Santo is alive, and is already a great baseball ambassador for his play and his broadcasting work. But apparently in order to get recognized nowadays you have to be dead. So in essence, the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee just told Ron Santo, Dick Allen, Tony Oliva, Joe Torre, Al Oliver, Luis Tiant and Maury Wills to drop dead.

Listen.

No player has been elected by the Veterans Committee since Mazeroski. Just executives and managers.

It now seems as if the whole point of this charade is to torment retired ballplayers by getting their hopes up every two years and then dashing it on the rocks. If that's the case, then just fucking dissolve the Veterans Committee altogether. Preferably with sulfuric acid. You've already changed the process three times and it's not working. At all. Maybe the crony system that put in Maz was the system that ACTUALLY WORKED.

Seriously, just stop this bullshit. You're doing nothing but angering your fan base and losing credibility every day.



The Hall of Fame will not be seeing a check from me in 2009. 2010 looks pretty bad too.

They're at it again

Topps is suing Upper Deck again. Something about UD having players Topps owns in Legendary Cuts. So now all the stuff has to be recalled even though half of it has already shipped and "prices are skyrocketing" blah blah blah.

I saw it first on Cardboard Mania, you can also get more details in The Daily, The Propaganda, and The Fantastic.

Topps and Upper Deck: A pox on both your houses. Quit fighting like you're Tweedledum and Tweedledee and put out better cards instead of shortprinting and pulling from production and recalling and all this crap designed to inflate prices. Somebody please give Donruss their license back already. *sigh*

To bring us back up from this bummer, here's some happy news from the world of memorabilia. Geddy Lee just donated over 200 autographed baseballs to the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City. MLB.com hilariously calls him "A Canadian punk rocker" in the article. I heard Geddy did it of his own Free Will too. Ha! I kill me. Good Job Geddy!

Hall of Fame Ballot

Editor's note: To the e-mailer who mentioned that he enjoys reading this blog with his 7-year old, you may want to print this out and redact it heavily. Dayf is especially grouchy today.

The insanely incredible BaseballReference.com (which you should all have bookmarked) has a cool Stat of the Day blog (which I thought I had bookmarked, but I didn't, so now I do - under blogs) which has a post where you can vote for the 2008 Hall of Fame candidates. I know, I just get finished ripping the real voters in my last post and now I'm trying to get you all to stick your necks out and vote too. Don't worry, I'd never rip you guys a new one, you're my buddies. My pals. My buddypals. Besides, you all actually know something about baseball, a subject the BBWAA seems to actively avoid if their vote tallies mean anything. Not convinced, eh? Think it's a trap, huh? Well if you won't click on the post and vote, at least click on it and check out the rookie cards of each of the candidates on the ballot. They're really pretty... and some are autographed! Once you see them you'll want to vote. Here are my choices, with brief explanations:

My Ballot:

No brainers:

Bert Blyleven

Reason: 3701. If you don't know what that number means, click here and find out. Meanest deuce ever.

Andre Dawson

Reason: Rookie of the Year, MVP, 8 Gold Gloves, he could hit the crap out of the ball... I know Cubs aren't generally allowed entrance to the Hall as a rule, but what the fuck's a guy gotta do?

Goose Gossage

Reason: The man was the most dominant closer in the game before anyone knew what the hell a closer was. Until Goose gets in no other closers get a single vote from me.

Tim Raines

Reason: 1571 runs, 2605 hits, 808 steals (with an 85% success rate), 170 homers, 980 RBI... ho hum, you want me to go on? Ok then... .385 lifetime OBP, 3771 total bases, 123 lifetime OPS+, 1330 walks...

Had to think about these for all of two seconds:

Harold Baines

Reason: Ok, so he's a DH. One of the best DH's to ever play the game. Look at the stats yourself, and remember most of that production came outside the Juiceball era.

Tommy John

Reason: Do a Google search for Babe Ruth and you get 308, 000 hits. Do one for Tommy John and you get 1,280,000 hits. 288 wins (164 after the surgery) don't hurt either.

Jack Morris

Reason: One of the absolute best pitchers of the 80's, plus he absolutely ruined my Braves in the World Series.
250 wins + 3 rings = Hall

Jim Rice

Reason: We get it already, writers don't like him. He's one of the best hitters of his era, period. 128 OPS+, 1451 RBIs, 382 homers when it was actually difficult to hit the damn things. Put him in.

These two were tough:

I had three players vying for two more slots on the ballot (you can only vote for 10). Here are the two that made it:

Dave Parker

Reason: He could hit, he could run, he won Gold Gloves, he won Silver Sluggers, he won an MVP, he won a couple of rings, he could hit for average, he could hit for power, he even stole some bases early in his career. Again, what's a guy gotta do? Plus his rookie card looks fucking awesome.

Dale Murphy

Reason: Ok, I'm entitled one homer pick. Still, for a five year period he was probably the best player in the National League. Other than batting average, his career stats are similar to Kirby Puckett who was an automatic. If Murph got hit by a bus in 1988 and no one saw that horrific decline at the end of his career, he'd be in. Or, to put it another way, if he had met Jose Canseco in 1988 and juiced himself to the gills he'd have 500 homers right now and would have been elected to the Hall of Fame in '98 or '99. Everyone's shitting their pants about steroids, yet they won't vote for a man who WON'T EVEN TAKE A FREAKING ASPIRIN. Goddamn fucking asshole hypocrite BBWAA bastardfucks.

Editor's note: I told you. Get the kid away from this post.


Who didn't make my ballot because I ran out of votes:

Don Mattingly: If the voting morons had elected Gossage two years ago when they were supposed to, I'd have a vote left for Mattingly. Now he's off my ballot when he really deserves to be on it. I hope you guys are proud of yourselves.

Mark McGwire: He'll get in eventually anyway. Everyone on my ballot deserves to get in before he does though.

Lee Smith: When Goose gets in, he can get in. If Goose doesn't go in, then NO CLOSER DESERVES TO GO IN EVER. Not Rivera, not Hoffman, not even Smoltz. NOBODY. If Gossage is left out, then the closers who are already in the Hall get dragged to the front steps of the Hall and beaten with pointed sticks in front of their weeping families while their plaques are removed from the building and burned as a warning to all closers. Closers become punters as far as the Hall is concerned. No one gets in. Not Goose, not Ray Guy, not nobody. And I am unanimous in this.

Alan Trammell: I don't know why he's not already in, and I'd like to vote for him, but I can't figure out who to bump off my list. This is what happens when you keep passing up deserving candidates year after year.

Dave Justice: Ok, two homer picks. To be honest, in my heart I don't think Dave has the stats to get into the Hall. He just didn't have a long enough career, and he unfortunately played in the heart of the Juicy era. Thing is, all Dave ever did was win. Win, win, win, win, win. His team made the playoffs every single year there was playoffs from 1991 to 2002. He played in 112 postseason games. Holy crap.

Dave Concepcion: He was one of the best fielders around, but couldn't hit worth a flip. With that lineup, he didn't really need to. 20 years from now, someone will slip the head of the Veteran's committee 5 grand and a key to a hotel room containing three cases of Cristal, two underage hookers and a shetland pony and Dave will get pushed through the voting and into the Hall. Then a shocking scandal will ensue, the committee rules will be screwed up again, no one will get elected for another twenty years and the cycle will repeat itself.

Everyone else I just couldn't bring myself to vote for them. I feel bad about not voting for Rod Beck though.

The Hall of Fame has Jumped the Shark

The Veterans Commitee finally elected new members to the Hall of Fame this morning, the first since Mazeroski.

First of all, congratulations to managers Dick Williams and Billy Southworth. They are championship skippers who both deserve the honor they are getting. I'm sorry they have to be involved in this mess. Also congratulations are in order to Barney Dreyfuss, who was the owner of the Pirates from 1900 to 1932 and helped create the World Series. Barney is already a member of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Now to the dicey choices.

Walter O'Malley was also elected to the Hall of Fame. I don't like it, but I can't complain about it. He is one of the most famous baseball team owners of all time and he did radically change the game. So what if he was instrumental in ripping the heart (and the entire National League) out of one of the best baseball cities in America. He made some money and that's what counts. So congratulations, Walter O'Malley, I and the entire city of Brooklyn hope your money and Hall of Fame Plaque are useful to you as you burn in the depths of Hell for all eternity.

Now to the guy I really have a problem with.

Former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was also elected to the Hall of Fame. Kuhn was a complete idiot as commissioner who bungled an attempt to rid the game of drugs, banned players from baseball right and left including Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for life just for working as greeters at a casino, snubbed Hank Aaron when he became the all time home run king, tried to get Negro League Hall of Fame inductees segregated to a different wing to the building, and in his most lasting and relevant act as commissioner, watched ineffectually as the long standing reserve clause came crashing down due to the efforts of Curt Flood and Marvin Miller. Now Bowie was a complete buffoon as commissioner, but then again, most of them were. Kenesaw Mountain Landis kept the league segregated as long as he lived, and he's in the Hall of Fame. Bud Selig canceled a freakin' World Series and he's going to be in the Hall of Fame. Idiot commissioners in the Hall of Fame is nothing new. It's just how things are done.

Now about Marvin Miller, that guy who utterly pwned Bowie and completely changed the economics of baseball, if not every professional sport in the entire world. What of him? Where is he now? NOT ELECTED TO THE HALL OF FAME. AGAIN. Miller is 90 years old. He should have been elected unanimously by the Veteran's committee the last time they met. And the time before that. Now he has to wait two more years until the next ballot.There is absolutely no logical reason why the person who arguably had had the most influence in professional sports in the past half-century should be out of the Hall of Fame while the man he ran circles around should get voted in. The committee that votes to elect executives is made up of 12 members: two former players (Monte Irvin and Harmon Killebrew), three media members and 7 current and former MLB executives. I'm sorry, but you can't tell me that Marvin's exclusion is not out of spite by these MLB executives because he screwed up their license to print money while not having to share with the players. I thought I could never be madder about a Hall of Fame injustice after Buck O'Neil was inexplicably left out, but I think I'm just as mad now. This is a terrible, terrible decision, and I'm not the only one who feels this way.