Hello Baseball Fans,
Happy New Year to all! And congratulations to Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza. They are headed to Cooperstown on the weekend of July 24th to deliver acceptance speeches as the Hall of Fame Class of 2016. The centerfielder and catcher extraordinaire represent an awesome combination of talent that any team on any level craves; high end players up the middle. Griffey Jr. a.k.a. Junior a.k.a. The Kid (Gary Carter was an older Kid) was a new kid on the ballot and even broke the record of percentage of votes received by getting 437 votes from the 440 ballots. He hit a whopping 630 homers, which are good for 6th all time for his hometown Reds’ #30 (and for 6 seasons he wore #30) . How do you NOT vote for this guy!? We’ll get into voting details a bit later. Piazza was drafted in the 62nd round (that’s not a type-o) of the 1988 draft and becomes the 14th player to don the tools of ignorance for a living and be inducted. He hit 396 bombs as a catcher. From a power perspective, among others of course, these guys were no-brainers to vote in. Let’s take a closer look at how they got there.
Junior (I always thought that was his best nickname) was the first overall pick in 1987 and becomes the first such #1 overall draftee to go all the way to Cooperstown. He could certainly bang the ball around the park and hang with the heaviest of heavy hitters. From 1996 to 2000, he smashed 249 HRs including back to back 56 HR seasons in ’97 and ’98. However, I liked watching him snare balls of the wall of the old Kingdome in Seattle. He was a bigger sized guy than most at his position with plenty of speed, and he could let the ball fly too and racked up 154 OF assists (1 assist ahead of Joe D. and 111th all-time). He had no problem chucking it in to the infield with some mustard on it from the warning track area. Gotta love this combo: 1,836 RBI (15th all-time), 7 Silver Sluggers, and 10 Gold Gloves. WOW! An all around great, great ballplayer. A natural!
Piazza could really stick too. Hit his way on base? No problem there with a career .308 average including 8 seasons of clips .318 or higher in his 16 seasons. He added 759 BBs to just 1,113 SOs (‘SO’ is a little curve for ya folks; batter strikeouts are SO on stats, not Ks. Just keeping you sharp). Try to find a guy with that favorable ratio in today’s game. Joey Votto comes to mind (got lucky there, he has 754 BBs to 884 SOs) but he’s still eight dingers shy of the 200 HR club. We’re talking 427 HRs overall with Piazza. He’s the 5th HOF catcher in the 2,000 hit club at 2,127 and racked up 1,335 RBI. And outside of his last year being played in Oakland, he couldn’t be a DH in the NL (other than a handful of games per year in interleague play) and played both ways at first base too. He was a gamer as he caught 99 or more games in a season 12 times en route to a fitting 12 Silver Sluggers. The guy had POP!
Despite playing in four post-season series, including an impressive display vs. the Yankees in ’95 during the first Wild Card season when he hit 5 Hrs, 7 RBI, and .391 average in 5 games in a 3-2 series win after trailing two games to none, I always likened Junior to Ernie Banks. They both played up the middle, as Banks was originally a shortstop, and both could hit for power. Each of them also had bad and nagging injuries. Banks played exactly zero games at short after turning 30. Junior stole just 17 of his career 184 bases past the age of 29. And like Banks, Junior never played in the Fall Classic either (and Ernie never even made the post-season although for all but three of his seasons it was World Series or bust). Two great players who sadly never appeared on the biggest stage. However, we’ve still got memories of that ’99 All-Star HR Derby. Junior put on quite a power display and won the derby in front of the All-Century Team with opposite field bombs over the Green Monster at Fenway Park.
Well, there’s the numbers for our new HOFers. One is deservedly revered as a no-doubt first ballot top 25 all-time great type (Junior) and the other represents arguably the greatest hitter at his natural position while being an average at best defender (Piazza). However, like it or not, they both represent the hexed performance enhancing drug or ‘P.E.D.’ era. Some voters and inside experts are suggesting that Piazza’s election will open the door for ‘suspected’ PED users. At this point, if there are no specific names or details or scandals to go along with the alleged suspects, do we have to keep treating them like they are guilty? And that’s without defining what they are guilty of since the testing and specified rules weren’t in place regarding PEDs until circa 2004. The caution that the voters have exercised in preventing a hall-worthy candidate getting in prior to proving his innocence is similar to proving you didn’t eat the last cookie from Mom’s jar (even though you did). It’s impossible! What exactly are they preventing? To be realistic, this isn’t a role model HOF.
The HOF is full of nice guys, naughty guys, hated guys, and loved guys. Despite the ‘masses are asses’ mantra that fits many things in life, the people (fans) are smart enough to know who may or may not have done what. And for several years now and forever going forward, drug testing tells us who really PED’d it up. Over one hundred years later, we know that not many players liked Ty Cobb’s attitudes and that Babe Ruth was a night owl (to put them both mildly). Since this is still the Information Age, an age with no end in sight, future generations will keep tabs on our current nominees and players in the same aspects, if not more so. No one will be fooled so there’s no need to sort everyone out.
We’re talking about the Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum that represents who played the best and accumulated the greatest statistics. PED users get suspended and serve their time by sitting out games and not being paid. To date, there is no automatic rule that banishes them from the game for life (unless you fail three drug tests). Pete Rose, the all-time hit king at 4,256, that’s a different story if I maintain application of stated rules. There is and was in his time a banishment rule for gambling on the game. There is actual proof of his gambling (a far cry from suspected) and he has yet to change his lifestyle, let alone fully apologize. Therefore, he’s out and will remain so. I’m fine with that perhaps more now than ever. However, go up the stairs from the Hall and you’ ll see his name in the ‘Museum’ section atop the lists of hits and runs scored and games played, etc. You can’t erase history. See, numbers don’t always lie. We can’t erase a generation from the HOF and still tell the whole story. Am I going to root for all of the ‘suspected’ and actual known PED guys to get in? No I’m not, and probably wouldn’t have rooted for some of them anyway. But rooting is for fans like us. Voting is for writers who follow the game everyday. That’s a responsibility.
Without the advantage of a voter’s poll, I suspect (I couldn’t NOT use that word again) that Piazza didn’t get in right away, as this was his fourth year on the ballot, due to a lack of defense, or catching, in his game. Catching is one of the two easiest ways to the big leagues, in regards to population of people who do it well enough (left handed power pitching the other), yet it’s the most difficult road to Cooperstown. Again, Piazza is 1 of 14 catchers among 300+ players and various contributors as HOFers. Rare air! If it took Yogi (no need for a last name) two tries, and he was a monster both at the plate AND behind it, I’m fine with Piazza taking four tries and a fifth wouldn’t have made me cry. Well, that and there’s no crying in baseball anyway. Nevermind what his election means toward suspected PED players. I don’t think it means anything other than we will see inconsistency amongst PED guys getting in from the Writer’s vote.
Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire are already eliminated (less than 5% of votes eliminated Palmeiro under old rules and McGwire’s 10 years of eligibility just ran out under the new rules) from future voting and Sammy Sosa (7%) will likely soon follow. However, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are in the mid 40’s percentile and so far still rising. And I don’t want to hear the justification that some guys were HOFers prior to PEDs. That’s no resolution. Those are suspect suspicions I’ll say. Inconsistency will be the biggest travesty in erecting the future HOF plaques. The Veterans Committee will be very busy in ten plus years. They will be the ones to make corrections to errors in voter inconsistencies, rather than further blur the line between talent and statistics vs. players’ alleged or proven choices.
It’s true that there is no such thing as bad public relations. P.R. is still p.r. The PED black cloud gets people talking. Die hard fans and just-watch-the-World Series fan alike. However, it’s great to have guys like Junior, who is among Cal Jr. and Ernie Banks and Yogi and many others who are ambassadors for the fun of the game. And Piazza is a guy who really cherishes the game and his own opportunities as well. It’s time to celebrate these guys and all the great moments they were a part of from Junior jumping into outfield walls and Piazza slugging big bombs in big ballparks on both coasts. They make a great HOF class. Overall, baseball is in a great place. But that’s nothing new this year.
Later Baseball Fans.