Small Haul for Hall

I trust that you all had a very nice holiday season. Before you get all down about the holidays being over and no vacation days coming up soon, don't fret. It's only two and a half months until pitchers and catcher report! Until then though, we have lots to talk about, including the recent Hall of Fame voting that took place yesterday. So without further ado, here comes the first blog of 2011.

I mentioned in a prior post that General Manager Pat Gillick had already been elected to the Hall by the Veterans Committee back on Dec. 6th. Now the players had their shot at immortality. Two wonderfully talented men joined the ranks of the elite on Wednesday; Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven. Alomar got in on his second try, but for Blyleven, this was his 14th attempt. Bert just squeaked by the required 75% votes, but Alomar breezed in with 90%. Both men are deserving of such high acclaim. Why you ask? Well, I shall tell you.

First, let us discuss Mr. Alomar. How does 12 All-Star selections in a row grab you? Not impressed? Well, he did win 10 Gold Glove awards, the most ever for a second-baseman and was daring and steadfast at 2B. You're still not convinced? Yeah, but he won 4 Silver Slugger awards and finished in the MVP top ten 5 times! Who cares, say you. Well, you are an idiot. No you are! Oh, pardon me, I was having a little battle with myself there. You see, I was one of the few baseball fans on this planet who didn't appreciate the Hall of Fame career Mr. Alomar had. This was because as a New York Mets fan in the early '00s, I saw Roberto come to my favorite team, and stink it up, only to be traded away. I never saw, nor appreciated how good he was before then. What I missed, was a whole heck of a lot.

As I have said many times in this blog, I don't know everything about baseball. There are lots of players, and statistics I don't fully appreciate. So I am embarrassed to say that I didn't really know much about Roberto Alomar's illustrious career until the past couple of years. I did know that he sucked with the Mets, and was out of baseball entirely a short time later. I remembered that he also spit on umpire John Hirshbeck in an ugly incident back in 1996. But please don't let these negative memories color your picture of Alomar. He apologized profusely for the spitting incident, and previous to that, he was a terrific sportsman, which he remained until he retired.

After all of that stupid information though, I failed to notice the outstanding player he was. Over the course of his 17 seasons, he scored over 1500 runs, collected 2724 hits, drove in over 1100 runners (tough to do considering he usually batted high in the order), stole 474 bags, and maintained a .300 average. While no one number bangs you over the head with its magnitude, these numbers combined total a career of consistent excellence, coupled with stellar defensive play at a demanding position. Why I never recognized this before, I don't know. But you learn new things everyday, and of recent, I've discovered that Roberto Alomar was one of the greatest second-basemen to ever play the game. I'm glad I know now.

Bert Blyleven was another gentleman I didn't know too much about several years ago. I only got to know him because people began discussing whether he was Hall of Fame worthy or not. Since learning more about him I must say quite frankly, some voting members were just plain blind. This man should have been in a long time ago. Here is one stat alone that warrants serious consideration for the Hall of Fame: 3701. That is the number of strikeouts Blyleven had, and is 5th best all-time, right below Steve Carlton, and right above Tom Seaver. He is also 9th all-time in shutouts with 60. 60! for crying out loud. And he managed to win 287 games over the course of 22 seasons. Most of those years on bad teams, which resulted in him having a record greater than .500 only 14 times. And most of those seasons looked like 16-15 (1971), 14-12 (1977), or 17-16 (1985).

Bert Blyleven was Hall of Fame worthy years ago, but only received his rightful honor the other day. There are players like Blyleven who get passed over by the voting writers, sometimes for years. Sometimes for legitimate reasons, and sometimes it's a mistaken. Lee Smith, for instance, was a dominate closer for the Chicago Cubs during the 1980s. He eventually played for 7 other teams throughout his career, and even until the age of 37, when he racked up 37 saves, he could close out a game. He had trouble walking people, which kept him from being even better than he was. When he left the game, though, he was the all-time saves leader, and still sits in 3rd place. Smith collected just 45.3% of the vote this year, down 2 points from last year. It's not looking good for 'Mr. Smith Goes to Cooperstown'.

Right below Smith on the all-time saves leaderboard is John Franco. He saved 424 games, with a 2.89 ERA over his career. Even though he played a number of years in New York, he was never a media presence, and was often overlooked. Now, because he received less than 5% of the vote in this, his first year, he won't ever appear on another ballot. Should Smith or Franco be in the Hall of Fame? That's pretty tough to say. More goes into these discussions than just stats, after all. It depends on the the era a person played in, if the player stood out versus his contemporaries, any accumulated awards, and sometimes off-the-field issues.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room. Steroids. There have been plenty of people who have cheated before. As Jayson Stark wrote in his ESPN column, "That noted Vaseline-ball king, Gaylord Perry, got caught 'cheating,' too, you know." And he didn't have too much trouble getting into the Hall of Fame on his third try in 1991. Steroids are looked upon differently though, and with good reason.

A pitcher can put something on the ball and that might help him win a game. But more often than not, this type of cheating gets caught, and players have to adjust, usually in the form of not cheating anymore. Taking steroids doesn't just help you hit the ball harder for a game, though. It changes you on a biological level. If a player gets caught taking steroids, and stops, he still is getting the benefit for weeks, sometimes even many months later, depending on lots of parameters. This is partially the reason why Major League Baseball has a 50 game suspension for those caught. So to say that steroid usage is in the same arena of cheating as saying, corking a bat, is far from the truth.

That is why it is so hard for the voting writers to decide who is worth of the Hall of Fame going forward. Great players like Raphael Palmeiro, who received a diminutive 11% in his first ballot this year, are forever tainted with the stench of steroid usage. Palmeiro is the most recent member of the 3000-hit/500-homerun club, and in 2005, it was said in an NBCSports article that his "entry into the elite 3,000-500 club is a testament to a stellar career that should gain him first-ballot entry into the Hall of Fame." 11% is about as far from first-ballot status as you can get. You can blame not only Palmeiro's positive steroid test for that, but also his wagging finger in front of Congress. Image counts for a lot.

Another noted user, Mark McGwire, who despite his 583 career homers, is still under 20% of the vote. That's less than Tim Raines, and Raines was a crackhead! Some might say this is just desserts for players who desecrated the game, but this is impacting players who might never have taken illegal substances. Hitters like Fred McGriff, Larry Walker, and Juan Gonzalez, who may be 100% clean, are, and will for some time, get a backlash lack of votes. They might not be Hall of Fame shoe-ins, but this isn't helping their chances.

This is only going to get worse as players like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and Sammy Sosa coming calling for plagues in 2013. The end result might be that players who 10 years ago were first-ballot studs, might never get in, thus leaving the Hall of Fame a little short on entries. This year the Hall welcomes two fine and deserving players. Next year, it looks like only shortstop Barry Larkin stands a legitimate chance of entrance, if anyone is elected at all. The Hall of Fame has some extremely tough decisions to make very soon on how to handle those players from the steroid era. I don't claim to have the answers. Mr. Stark offers some advice in his article here, http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/hof11/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=5987228. In the end, history will remember more than an asterisk may potentially tell us. But will history remember all events correctly?