As part of an ongoing project, One More Dying Quail will be profiling the 182 current members of the Bizarro Hall of Fame, an organization that currently exists only in my mind. It was created in the wake of Major League Baseball’s infamous Steroid Era as a way of honoring those players whose careers were perfectly mediocre: the only requirement is that a candidate be listed on the official Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and receive zero votes. Class of 1984
Ron Fairly – A three-time World Series winner with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Fairly was the only player to play for the original Montreal Expos in 1969 (he wasn’t an original Original, joining the team via trade in June) and the original Toronto Blue Jays in 1977. His greatest individual performance came in the 1965 World Series against the Twins, when he hit .379 with two homeruns and probably would have won the Most Valuable Player award if not for a guy by the name of Koufax.
(All Hall of Fame voting results were obtained from the official web site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Statistical information included in postings for the Bizarro Hall of Fame was, unless otherwise noted, originally compiled by Baseball-Reference.com.)
(Coming soon: the Bizarro Hall of Fame Class of 1983.)
As part of an ongoing project, One More Dying Quail will be profiling the 182 current members of the Bizarro Hall of Fame, an organization that currently exists only in my mind. It was created in the wake of Major League Baseball’s infamous Steroid Era as a way of honoring those players whose careers were perfectly mediocre: the only requirement is that a candidate be listed on the official Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and receive zero votes.
Class of 1989
Jim Barr – Barr had a fairly unremarkable career with the San Francisco Giants and California Angels, but owns a fairly remarkable record: on August 23, 1972, he retired the final twenty-one batters he faced; six days later, he set down the first twenty. The forty-one consecutive outs remains a major league record. Another interesting fact: Barr was drafted six times between 1966 and 1970.
Terry Crowley – Many current observers lament the fact that the Hall of Fame’s standards have sunk so low that players such as Scott Brosius are now included on the ballot. They are obviously unaware of Terry Crowley, a man whose main claims to fame were serving as the first designated hitter in Baltimore Orioles history and being a really good pinch-hitter. He has spent the last eight years as the Orioles hitting coach.
Joe Ferguson – Luke Walker was almost a part of baseball history, but Joe Ferguson turned him into a mere footnote. In the second game of a July 18, 1971 doubleheader, the Pirates’ Walker took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The bid ended quickly when the first batter, Ferguson, hit his first major league homerun. Two years later, Ferguson enjoyed his best season, hitting 25 homers and driving in 88 runs.
Woodie Fryman – Am I insane in thinking that Woodie Fryman is Travis Fryman’s father? There seems to be no proof of it anywhere on the Internets. Anyway, Woodie spent most of his career as a journeyman pitcher for six organizations. He made two All-Star appearances as a starter in 1968 and 1976, but enjoyed his greatest success in a relief role with the Montreal Expos from 1979-82. In 1981, Fryman helped Les Expos to the playoffs with seven saves and a 1.88 ERA.
Cesar Geronimo – Geronimo was not a great offensive player (his career-best OPS was .796) but he hit well in the post-season, with .280 and .308 averages in Cincinnati’s back-to-back wins over Boston in 1975 and New York in 1976. His true value in that time, however, was as one of the National League’s best defensive outfielders, with four consecutive Gold Gloves awards in the mid-seventies.
Dave Goltz – If the name doesn’t sound familiar (and it didn’t to me), it’s probably because Goltz toiled for some mediocre Minnesota teams in the 1970s. He still won fourteen or more games every season from 1975-79 (and lost ten or more from 1974-80), including a 20-11 mark in 1977 that earned him a sixth place finish in the voting for the National League Cy Young award.
Jon Matlack – For some reason, I expected Matlack’s numbers to be better; sorry to say, but there might have been some weird confusion with Jerry Koosman. Matlack was a good pitcher, however, winning fifteen games and the National League Rookie of the Year award in 1972. He averaged fifteen wins a year 1972-76, but slumped to 7-15 in 1977 and was shipped off to Texas after the season. His first season resulted in fifteen wins for the second place Rangers, but it was his last good season. Also (and there’s really no reason to mention this, other than it made me laugh), his middle name is Trumpdour.
Rudy May – Aside from leading the American League with a 2.46 ERA in 1980, the highlight of Rudy May’s career has to be the June 1976 trade that sent him from the New York Yankees to the Baltimore Orioles. Sure, it meant he missed out on the Bronx Bombers back-to-back championships in 1977 and 1978, but it’s cool because the deal also included Bizarro Hall of Famers Scott McGregor and Doyle Alexander.
Bake McBride – An interesting little factoid: of the eight players who took home the National League Rookie of the Year award from 1972-1979 (there was a tie in 1976), five were Bizarro Hall of Famers. McBride, a 37th round draft pick by the Cardinals in 1970, was the third in that stretch, hitting .309 and stealing thirty bases for St. Louis in 1974. His most amazing feature, however, was his hair; while not quite up to the high level set by Oscar Gamble, McBride’s mane was a legendary feature in it’s own right.
Bill Robinson – Robinson made his major league debut with the Atlanta Braves at the age of 23 and spent his next two seasons with the Yankees, but a .171 average landed the 26 year old back in the minor leagues for two full seasons. He reemerged with the Phillies in 1972 and hit 25 homeruns the following season. After being traded to Pittsburgh at the start of 1975, Robinson became an offensive threat, hitting twenty-plus homeruns three times.
Richie Zisk – When Bill Veeck bought the Chicago White Sox in 1976, he walked right into the birth of free agency. Knowing he couldn’t compete financially for the best players, he chose instead to go after guys who were questions marks and sign them for reasonable prices. Zisk was one of those players, and he paid off big-time, enjoying the best season of his career (30 homeruns, 101 RBI, .290 batting average and the first of two All-Star appearances) before bolting to Texas for a ten year, $2.3 million deal.
(Coming soon: the Bizarro Hall of Fame Class of 1988.)
(All Hall of Fame voting results were obtained from the official web site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Statistical information included in postings for the Bizarro Hall of Fame was, unless otherwise noted, originally compiled by Baseball-Reference.com.)
Sixty years ago this coming Sunday, Jack Robinson stepped onto a baseball field and into the history books. A fiery competitor and talented all-around athlete, he had been chosen by Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey as the ideal player to implement what is sometimes called “The Great Experiment”: the crossing of baseball’s “color line”, a barrier that had prevented African-American players from competing in the major leagues since the late 1800s.
Following his April 15th debut, Robinson did exactly as Rickey had hoped, winning the Rookie of the Year award, leading the Dodgers into the World Series and keeping his cool in the face of tremendous hatred from teammates, opposing players and fans alike. It was the start of a ten-year career that would ultimately be capped by a long-awaited World Series victory for Brooklyn in 1955 and induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Robinson’s contributions to the game of baseball and the civil rights movement led Major League Baseball to honor him in 1997 by retiring his number 42 throughout the league. It was an unprecedented move that brought Robinson, who died in 1972, back to the forefront and presented his story to an entirely new generation of baseball fans.
Because players who wore number 42 at the time of its retirement were allowed to continue doing so until the end of their own playing days, New York Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera still provides a reminder of Robinson’s legacy every time he takes the mound. On April 15, 2007, however, he won’t be the only one. On that day, with every team in baseball paying some sort of homage to Jack’s legacy, any player on any team will have the option of pulling on number 42.
The idea was originally conceived by Cincinnati Reds outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr. and embraced by commissioner Bud Selig. Griffey wasn’t yet three years old when Robinson died, but has nevertheless studied and learned the lessons imparted by his predecessor’s life:
“What I think: If he didn’t achieve or didn’t overcome the racial tension, would I be wearing this uniform? Or, when was the next opportunity that an African-American would get a chance to put on another major league uniform if he didn’t achieve what he did?”
Griffey’s grasp of those who came before him and the way they affected his own career are admirable, but they highlight a regrettable omission that is often made when discussing the issue of race in baseball: the contributions of Lawrence Eugene Doby.
Where Jack Robinson is always celebrated, Larry Doby is often forgotten. The first African-American to play in the American League, he was originally signed by innovative Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck in early July 1947 and made his major league debut on July 5. His first season was difficult (.156 batting average in 32 at-bats, mostly as a pinch-hitter and second baseman), but he shifted to the outfield in 1948 and became a key player on the Indians championship team that year and its pennant winner in 1954.
Unlike Robinson, who was a 28-year-old veteran of the United States military and the Negro Leagues by the time he made his major league debut, Doby was only 23 when he joined the Indians, a kid thrown into a hellish situation. Like Robinson, however, he had played in the Negro Leagues (four years with the Newark Eagles), was an excellent ballplayer, and was greeted with distrust and outright hate by many people, including some of his new teammates. Robinson was no stranger to racism – he was court-martialed in 1944 after refusing to move to the back of a military bus; he was eventually acquitted of the charges – but Doby was less used to such behavior:
“I’d never faced any circumstances like that. Teammates were lined up and some would greet you and some wouldn’t. You could deal with it, but it was hard.”
It is nearly impossible to imagine the similar situations faced by Robinson and Doby – young men who kept their composure despite facing more than most of us can fathom – but for some reason, the latter man’s story has never been fully appreciated by Major League Baseball or its fans. Robinson’s number 42 was retired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972 and all of baseball in 1997; Doby’s number 14 wasn’t retired by the Indians until 1994. Robinson was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1962, his first year of eligibility; Doby also made it to Cooperstown, but he had to wait until 1998, and then only after the writers had finished considering his case and passed him on to the Veteran’s Committee.
Ken Griffey Jr.’s plan to honor Jack Robinson by wearing his number 42 is a great idea, one that every major leaguer should consider sharing next week. But it would also be a great idea if somebody on the Cleveland Indians – maybe C.C. Sabathia, who recently lamented the lack of young black players in the game – asked team management for permission to don number 14.
Because while Jack Robinson was great and deserves all the accolades he has received, the career of Larry Doby is worthy of recognition as well.
As part of an ongoing project, One More Dying Quail will be profiling the 182 current members of the Bizarro Hall of Fame, an organization that currently exists only in my mind. It was created in the wake of Major League Baseball’s infamous Steroid Era as a way of honoring those players whose careers were perfectly mediocre: the only requirement is that a candidate be listed on the official Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and receive zero votes.
Class of 1990
Mike Caldwell – For three years after a solid 14-5, 2.95 campaign for San Francisco in 1974, Caldwell’s career seemed to be on the decline. He was dealt from Cincinnati to Milwaukee in June 1977, however, and his career revived for one glorious final act, a 22-9 record and second place finish in the Cy Young voting in 1978.
Roy Howell – The fourth overall pick in the 1972 draft, Howell was traded to Toronto a month into the team’s inaugural season of 1977 and made the American League All-Star team in 1978. He signed with Milwaukee as a free agent following the 1980 season, appearing in three playoff series over the next two years. After a promising start in the 1981 Division Series (4-for-5), he went hitless in fourteen at-bats in the ALCS and World Series.
Jose Morales – Morales finished his twelve-year major league career with a total of 375 hits, nearly one third of which came as a pinch-hitter. His only appearance on Baseball Reference’s “Appearances on Leaderboards and Awards” section comes thanks to his status as the National League’s ninth oldest player in 1984.
Amos Otis – A five-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glover, Otis hit .478 with three homeruns for the Kansas City Royals in the team’s 1980 World Series loss to Philadelphia. He played fourteen of his seventeen major league seasons in Kansas City, finishing in the top ten in the Most Valuable Player voting four times.
Tony Scott – Not many 71st round draft picks ever make the major leagues, let alone stick around for eleven seasons, but Tony Scott did just that, earning steady playing time with St. Louis and Houston from 1979-1982. The first year was his best, as he used his speed to steal 37 bases and tally ten triples for the Cardinals.
Ken Singleton – A powerful hitter with a good eye, Singleton racked up over 2,000 hits, 1,000 runs batted in and nearly 250 homeruns in 15 major league seasons. His best year was 1979, when his 35 homeruns, 111 RBI and second-place finish in the MVP voting powered Baltimore to the World Series. They lost that Fall Classic to Willie Stargell’s Pittsburgh Pirates, but Singleton got his ring four years later when the O’s beat Philadelphia.
Paul Splittorff – Splittorff was drafted by the Royals in the 25th round of the 1968 draft and made his major league debut two years later. Three years after that, he was a twenty game winner for Kansas City, helping the team to a second-place finish in the American League West. He ultimately won 166 games in fifteen major league seasons, all of them with the Royals.
John Stearns – The second overall pick in 1973 made four All-Star teams in his eleven year career, but was left off the squad in 1978, which might have been his best season (career-high 15 homeruns, 25 stolen bases, 65 runs scored). His career was technically spent with two teams, the Phillies and Mets, but 809 of 810 games were spent with the Mets; he played one game in Philadelphia before being dealt to New York as part of a trade for Tug McGraw.
Champ Summers – Champ was an undrafted free agent who only had 350 hits in eleven seasons, so I’m gonna turn this one over to the Rumors and Rants, which put together a tremendous listing of the various bloggers’ thoughts on their favorite players. In a tremendous coincidence, the all-time favorite of The Wayne Fontes Experience was…Champ Summers. Their thoughts:
“His style of play really struck a chord in a teenaged me. As a left-handed, dead pull hitting, platoon OF/DH, Champ had a swing that was tailor made for Tiger Stadium. Unfortunately, Summers often butted heads with Sparky Anderson, which led to a trade that absolutely devastated me. The best seasons of Summers’ career were spent with the Tigers, while making me a fan for life.”
#### Tidrow – Tidrow won forty games in his first three seasons, but only managed sixty in his last ten years. He appeared in three straight World Series for the Yankees from 1976-78, posting a 1.93 ERA in the last year.
(Coming soon: the Bizarro Hall of Fame Class of 1989.)
(All Hall of Fame voting results were obtained from the official web site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Statistical information included in postings for the Bizarro Hall of Fame was, unless otherwise noted, originally compiled by Baseball-Reference.com.)
Jack Buck said it best: "I don't believe what I just saw."
Buck was talking, of course, about Kirk Gibson's dramatic homerun off Dennis Eckersley in Game One of the 1988 World Series. Sixteen years later, however, and more than two years after the broadcasting great's death in the summer of 2002, the phrase could have just as easily been applied to another improbable moment: the Boston Red Sox fight back from a 3-0 deficit in the American League Championship Series to capture the pennant and win the World Series.
There were many heroes that year, some big, some small. No Sox fan will ever forget the contributions of David Ortiz, the jovial giant who went from a great hitter to an immortal one in the space of fourteen postseason games, or Curt Schilling, the veteran pitcher whose blood stained sock came to represent the physical and mental toughness with which the team approached its epic ALCS comeback. And how can any mention be made of 2004 heroes and not include Dave Roberts, the little used speedster who did the impossible and stole the biggest base of his life when absolutely everyone in the ballpark knew he was running?
There is another player I've always felt should be a part of that list, one that has never in my opinion received his just due as a contributing member of that memorable team: Keith Foulke, the closer who was brought in as a free agent to anchor a bullpen one year removed from the ill-fated "closer by committee" experiment, saved 32 games in the regular season, then took his game to an entirely different level in the postseason. Though one can' t tell by looking at his wins (1) and saves (3) for the eleven games in which he appeared over the course of the three series, Foulke was a hugely important part of the Red Sox success, allowing just one run on seven hits with nineteen strikeouts in fourteen innings.
His finest moments came in the epic Games Four and Five against the Yankees: in those two games, each of which featured a storyline that had Boston down a run and facing elimination in the late innings, he held the Bronx Bombers scoreless for a total of five frames, including stranding the potential series ending run at third base in the ninth inning of the fifth game. In Game Six, he slammed the door on New York, which had scored in two consecutive innings to cut a 4-0 deficit in half, by finishing off the ninth for his only official save of the series. It was one of the gutsiest pitching performances I can recall. Every inning, I sat in my apartment and implored manager Terry Francona to go to the bullpen before the fatigue caught up with Foulke and rendered him hittable; every inning, Foulke reached down a little deeper and found some hidden reserve with which to retire the Yankees yet again.
Between the ALDS, ALCS and the World Series, Foulke appeared in eleven games and pitched nineteen innings from October 6 to October 27, an average of roughly one game and two pressure-filled innings every two days. It should have come as no surprise, then, that the one-time All Star was a shell of his former self in 2005 and 2006, battling a variety of injuries and less than supportive fans. The knee, back and elbow problems were probably frustrating enough; the booing must have made it unbearable. They didn't boo Schilling, after all, when he struggled to rehab his ankle and didn't really regain his bearings on the mound until last season. But they booed Foulke, even after it became clear that any failure he sustained wasn't for lack of trying, but because his body wouldn't let him.
The Red Sox let him go this winter, freeing him to sign a one-year, $5 million deal with the Cleveland Indians. The reason: his body just wasn't ready to play major league baseball again.
I wish Foulke all the best in retirement. He might not have had the best time in Boston, but without his presence in the bullpen in 2004, I wouldn't have some of the best memories from my time as a sports fan.
In the coming weeks, I will be profiling the 182 current members of the Bizarro Hall of Fame, an organization that currently exists only in my mind. It was created in the wake of Major League Baseball’s infamous Steroid Era as a way of honoring those players whose careers were perfectly mediocre: the only requirement is that a candidate be listed on the official Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and receive zero votes.
Class of 2000
Hubie Brooks – Brooks had a nice, if well-traveled, major league career (he played for five teams in fifteen seasons), but there is really only one reason for him to have ever appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot: his name. Sure, fans will point to the fact that he was a two-time All-Star in 1986 and 1987, or that he drove in 100 runs in 1985, or that he finished third in the National League Rookie of the Year voting in 1981, but that is all largely irrelevant. His ownership of a name better suited for a six-year old boy? Totally amusing. Of course, when you start out as “Hubert”, how much hope do you really have?
Coming soon: The Bizarro Hall of Fame Class of 1999.
This optimistic fellow is David Glass, the one-time president and CEO of Wal-Mart and a member of the Retail Hall of Fame (Note: That particular gem came from Wikipedia, so I’m mildly skeptical that it is actually true. Fact or fiction, however, it is simply too awesome to leave out). He has also been affiliated with the Kansas City Royals for over a decade, starting as Chairman of the Board of Directors in 1993 before acquiring ownership of the team seven years later. Those seven years have not been good ones for an organization that was once one of the best in baseball; the Royals have finished no better than third in any single year, posted just one winning record, and lost one hundred or more games four of the past five seasons.
Kansas City’s futility is well documented, which is in part what makes Glass’s optimistic pronouncement so puzzling. It doesn’t make sense that he would be trying to put one over on the team’s fans: as bad as the Royals have been since the Glass regime started, he could tell them his first name is David and still be greeted with skepticism. That means that there is only one possible reason for Glass to make such a comment regarding his ball club: he actually believes that they can win some games and be competitive in the American League’s Central Division.
Doug Tucker’s article for the Associated Press points out a few reasons behind Glass’s pronouncement, foremost among them the expected emergence of third baseman Alex Gordon and pitcher Luke Hochevar, the second and first overall picks in the last two drafts, respectively. Both are huge question marks, however, with all the potential in the world, but no experience at the major league level (or even the high minors, for that matter) on which to hang their hats. Gordon has played one season professionally, at the Royals’ AA affiliate in Wichita last season, but it was a promising one: .325, 29, 101. Hochevar hasn’t even gone that far, his experience with affiliated minor league teams limited to four 2006 starts with Burlington, a low A level team.
Also mentioned in the article is the Royals’ activity on the free agent market this off-season, specifically the signings of starting pitcher Gil Meche and relievers Octavio Dotel and David Riske. Still, in a Sporting News ranking of American League bullpens, Kansas City was listed at thirteen, in front of only Tampa Bay. That’s bad. And the Meche signing smacks of a small market team displaying poor judgment by throwing a lot of money at a mediocre player. The former first round draft pick is only 28, but has still won just 55 games in six major league seasons – the contract he signed rewards him with one million dollars for each of those wins.
The bottom line is this: it’s nice that David Glass is trying to be optimistic about his team, but any time an owner says of that same team, “I may need a scorecard to figure out who all the new players are,” we should probably take what he says with a grain of salt.
If the Royals make a run at the Central Division lead this season, it will be a great story. But unless Dayton Moore has some more tricks up his sleeve (and they’d better be more impressive than some of the moves former GM Allard Baird managed near the end of his tenure with the team), they will find it difficult to stick around with the likes of Detroit, Chicago and Minnesota, and 2007 could be another long season in Kansas City.
"This is perhaps the most exciting team Kansas City has fielded in a long time."
…if I ever decide to semi-seriously follow the English Premier League, my team is definitely going to be Portsmouth, affectionately known as Pompey to its fans. They may not be all that good right now, but I attended Portsmouth High School here in New Hampshire, so it makes sense.
…don’t look now, but the Iona Gaels are all alone among winless teams in Division 1 basketball. Coverage won’t be as intense and regular as it was for the winless football teams this fall, but expect at least some attention if they hit the twenty loss mark without picking up a win.
…you have to feel bad for Joe Horn: eleven years in the league, seven with the Saints, four Pro Bowls, and he can’t get on the field and contribute to the team’s success. It has to be killing him.
…the Boston Celtics have to figure out their problems soon, before this season goes totally down the tubes. They can only use the “at least we’re in the Atlantic Division” rationale for so long. Sooner or later, at least one of the other teams in the division is going to get hot and break away from the pack.
…luck of the Irish: as soon as the Celtics find a player who could potentially team with Paul Pierce and Wally Sizzle as a legitimate scoring threat, he blows out a knee on a stupid, stupid play.
…some people want to assign more importance to Barry Bonds’ positive amphetamines test than it truly deserves. I look at it this way: if we assume that players have used greenies for the last fifty or sixty years, then we can also assume that they don’t provide an exceptional performance boost, or else the numbers wouldn’t have fluctuated as wildly as they did during those decades.
…did anyone else curious what kind of “treatment” Shawne Merriman and Shaun Phillips were receiving in the locker room during the Patriots-Chargers game?
…seriously, though, I’m going to go with the reasoning that Merriman’s steroid suspension was the result of a young kid who made a stupid mistake, and that it won’t happen again. It can be easy to forget that he’s only 22 years old – I was a #### when I was his age.
…I can’t be the only person who wants to see a steamroller team in college basketball again – I’m talking a virtually unbeatable team that just breaks the collective spirit of its opponents, like the early 1990s teams from UNLV and Duke.
…pending further thought, Major League is my third favorite baseball movie of all time, a considerable distance behind Field of Dreams and Bull Durham. I have to put together a list of my favorites one of these days and see if it cracks the top ten sports flicks.
…just one thing, though: if Cerrano couldn’t hit a curveball, and everyone knew he couldn’t hit a curveball, how did he last the season? Wouldn’t he have struck out about 400 times?
…the University of New Hampshire men’s hockey team is sitting pretty at this point with a 17-3-1 overall record and number three national ranking. Maybe this will be the year they take home a national championship.
In the coming weeks, I will be profiling the 182 current members of the Bizarro Hall of Fame, an organization that currently exists only in my mind. It was created in the wake of Major League Baseball’s infamous Steroid Era as a way of honoring those players whose careers were perfectly mediocre: the only requirement is that a candidate be listed on the official Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and receive zero votes.
Class of 2004
Danny Darwin – Here’s something I did not know Danny Darwin: his brother, Jeff, was a relief pitcher for the Mariners and White Sox for three seasons in the mid-1990s. Somehow, my wife and Baseball Reference knew this, but I somehow missed it. The elder Darwin (Danny is nearly fourteen years older than Jeff) had a lifetime record of 171-182 in 21 major league seasons, but had a perfectly respectable 3.84 ERA (including a National League-leading 2.21 mark in 1990). His best season was with the Red Sox in 1993, when he countered Roger Clemens’ worst season to that point with fifteen wins and a 3.26 ERA.
Bob Tewksbury – I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for Tewksbury since looking at his baseball card as a child and learning he was originally from New Hampshire. He is still active in the area, working as a television analyst for the Red Sox and doing charitable work with the Boys & Girls Clubs of New Hampshire. As a player, he enjoyed his best success in his early thirties, winning 33 games for the Cardinals and finishing third to Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine in the 1992 Cy Young Award voting.
Coming soon: the Bizarro Hall of Fame Class of 2003.
In the coming weeks, I will be profiling the 182 current members of the Bizarro Hall of Fame, an organization that currently exists only in my mind. It was created in the wake of Major League Baseball’s infamous Steroid Era as a way of honoring those players whose careers were perfectly mediocre: the only requirement is that a candidate be listed on the official Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and receive zero votes.
Class of 2005
Mark Langston – Voters in 2005 obviously forgot the pitcher that Langston was early in his career, when he struck out 200+ batters in five out of his first six seasons for the Seattle Mariners before being traded to Montreal for Randy Johnson. He also won 179 games in sixteen major league seasons (including seven seasons with fifteen or more wins), was an All-Star four times and took home seven Gold Gloves.
Otis Nixon – the player my mother still affectionately refers to as “The Druggie” probably deserves his Bizarro fate after the way he ended the 1992 World Series: with the tying run on third in the bottom of the eleventh inning of Game Six, he threw up the baseball equivalent of a white flag, rolling a casual little bunt that pitcher Mike Timlin fielded easily for the final out. Sure, Nixon was one of the fastest humans alive, and it might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn’t.
Coming soon: the Bizarro Hall of Fame's Class of 2004.
Under normal circumstances, I am a fan of ESPN.com writer Bill Simmons. His non-magazine columns can run pretty long, he obsesses over his own perceived sports and pop culture genius, and the way he references “my buddy so-and-so” is an annoying literary device, but those negatives are far outweighed by the one major positive: every Wednesday and Friday, I look forward to his column and am disappointed if it doesn’t run. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that all three of those faults that I just pointed out in Simmons’ writing pretty much apply to me as well.)
In the nearly ten years that Simmons has written a column, first for his own “Sports Guy” web site and then for ESPN.com, he has fathered and furthered a number of ideas that help deepen my own personal appreciation of sports. (The Ewing Theory, in which a team becomes more successful after an irreplaceable player suffers a serious injury or retires, is a personal favorite.) Recent months had seen a visible change in The Sports Guy, however, from the guy we wanted to hang out and talk sports with to the drunk dude at the end of the bar who spends his evenings tossing out opinons, often unsolicited, on anything and everything. Some of those thoughts are frustrating, such as his recent unhealthy obsession with “The Wire” (really, Bill, I want to see the show, but not for the $60 it’ll cost me at Best Buy) and Allen Iverson, but others make a surprising amount of sense, not least of all a recent riff on the quality of the announcing in professional sports.
With Wednesday afternoon’s piece on Mark McGwire his chances of making the Hall of Fame, Simmons covered the entire spectrum from knowledgeable sports fan to crazy old drunk man. He made a few very good points, including one where he pointed out the discrepancy that exists between objectionable incidents on television or radio programs and those that occur on the Internet:
“…[P]art of our country's problem is the shortsighted way we "protect" our kids from life's harsh realities. Janet Jackson's nipple slip was such a traumatic moment for Americans that some live sporting events now run on tape-delay, and Howard Stern fled to SIRIUS to escape the clutches of the increasingly fascistic FCC. Meanwhile, any kid can glimpse Britney's #### if he or she is even remotely familiar with Google, and anyone can be slandered anonymously on a blog or message board."
The last line notwithstanding (if the focus was truly on kids, it probably should have said something about chat rooms or Myspace instead of blogs or messages; in the current form, it reads like somebody was skewered on one or more sites and is taking it kind of personally. And before you call me insensitive to his feelings, please remember that I am the same person who once had a post referred to as “#### terrible” by a Deadspin commenter, and I get paid a lot less than Bill Simmons to put up with that kind of criticism), this is an interesting thought. He’s not saying we should be more firm in our regulation of the Internet, but that parents should be the parties responsible for making sure their children don’t see content they shouldn’t, and if they do, that they aren’t scarred forever by it. Can’t really argue with that.
Simmons continued in that vein, tying the messed up nature of our country to the idea that Mark McGwire doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame:
“Look, our country is #### up. Whether we like it or not, people will always gamble, use illegal drugs, drink and drive, cheat on their spouses, cheat on tests, lie and steal, ditch their families, swear and fight, use performance-enhancing drugs. Banishing Mark McGwire from Cooperstown isn't going to make any of that go away. Let's stop pretending that the Baseball Hall of Fame is a real-life fantasy world -- a place where we celebrate only the people and events we can all unanimously agree deserve to be celebrated -- and transform it into an institution that reflects both the good and bad of the sport. Wait -- wasn't that Cooperstown's mission all along? Shouldn't it be a place where someone who knows nothing about baseball can learn about its rich history? Isn't it a museum, after all?”
Starts off well here, then heads down a dangerous road. As pessimistic as it sounds, I happen to believe that the first two sentences are pretty much dead on: no matter what we do to try and fix it, America will always have problems. The country is a reflection of who we are as individuals in that no one is perfect, but most people are basically good.
Simmons takes things to a bad place, however, near the end of the paragraph when he asks the question, “Shouldn’t [the Hall of Fame] be a place where someone who knows nothing about baseball can learn about its rich history? Isn’t it a museum, after all?”
Yes and yes. Cooperstown is baseball’s Mecca, a point on the map where pilgrimmages end with fathers pointing their sons to Stan Musial’s jersey or the ball from Nolan Ryan’s 7th no-hitter. The Hall of Fame has, in its long history, created innumerable fans, strengthened the love of the game for countless others, and provided a checkpoint for everyone to boost their baseball I.Q.
The problem with Simmons point here is that he is falling victim to the common misperceptions that the plaque gallery makes up the majority of the Hall and that if you aren’t an elected member, you don’t exist to Cooperstown.
“If that's the case -- and I say it is -- then how can we leave out Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader and most memorable competitor of his era? And how can we even consider leaving out McGwire, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa, the three most memorable hitters of the 1990s? We're supposed to stick our heads in the historical sand and pretend these people were never born? Imagine if the rest of the world worked like this. Word is, JFK cheated on his wife. Should we change the name of the airport and remove all his memorabilia from the Smithsonian?”
This argument is not new; it’s one of the same ones we see every time the question of Rose’s candidacy comes up. The problem is that Rose has not been “left out” of the Hall of Fame to the extent that most members of the media and casual fans would like to believe. “Charlie Hustle” is very much a part of the Hall of Fame (the organization’s web site states that he donated more than twenty items during his career, with many currently on display) – he just isn’t allowed to attain the highest honor, that of a member. By the same token, even if McGwire never receives a plaque in Cooperstown, he will always have a presence there. His accomplishments will always be mentioned, with his rookie record 49 homeruns in 1987 and the way he and Sosa helped bring the game back with the Great Homerun Chase of 1998 at the head of the class. If anything, players like Rose and McGwire get a good deal from the Hall of Fame for the simple fact that the bad points in their careers don’t have nearly as high a profile as the good times.
(Quick note: Sosa, a guy who exploded into superstardom in 1998, was one of the three most memorable hitters of the 1990s? Has Bill Simmons never heard of Frank Thomas or Ken Griffey, Jr.?
Oh, and that JFK analogy? Totally off-base. Pete Rose gambled on baseball, including games in which his team was involved. Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds allegedly took drugs that allowed them to develop from good or great ballplayers to legendary figures. Last time I checked, Kennedy’s extramarital affairs didn’t affect his presidency either way. The part about his memorabilia was also ill fitting, for the same reasons explained above.)
Personally, I’m on the fence regarding Mark McGwire’s Hall of Fame candidacy; I won’t be sad if he makes it or happy if he doesn’t. But if he does find himself on the outside looking in after the results are announced, I hope people are smart enough to realize that just because he doesn’t have a spot in the plaque gallery, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a spot in the Hall of Fame.
Anyone who seriously follows sports is certain to be familiar with the work of Skip Bayless, the ESPN “personality” who has built a lengthy career out of presenting a contrary viewpoint on even the most mundane topics. His shtick has made him one of the most annoying characters on the World Wide Leader and earned him multiple appearances on The Big Lead, Deadspin, Awful Announcing and a variety of other web sites with writers more talented and less in-your-face controversial than John Edward (that’s Skip’s real name).
I don’t plan to say much in these next few paragraphs that hasn’t been said before; when someone is as disliked as Bayless is and draws as much fierce criticism as he does, it becomes difficult to bring anything original to the table. That’s the thing about Skip, though: even though you know he’s been skewered time and again for his loudly expressed opinions, there’s something about the way he presents himself that just makes you want to pull out the ol’ laptop and start tapping away, if only in the hopes that writing about his latest misguided attempt at playing devil’s advocate will clear it from your brain so you don’t have to think about it anymore.
This afternoon, for instance, I happened to catch Skip and Roy S. Johnson on the “1st and 10” segment of the Cold Pizza morning show. (Quick question on Cold Pizza: is Dana Jacobsen pregnant? Today was the first time I had seen the show in a while and she looked bigger than I remembered. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you remember someone as tall, well-built and sort of attractive, then see them a few months later and they’re still tall, still somewhat attractive, but with what could best be described as a general roundness of figure, you tend to wonder what’s going on. Back to Skip.) On one of the early “downs”, there was a topic regarding Barry Bonds and steroids, spurred of course by the recent revelation that the federal government has obtained records of over one hundred players who tested positive for steroids prior to the start of Major League Baseball’s current program, a group that may or may not include Bonds. Bayless, as expected, ranted on and on about the issue, basically rehashing in a thirty second span everything he has written about Bonds in the last few years while also throwing baseball under the bus for having dirty players and cheaters (pretty sure that covers his response – I really should have jotted down some notes). Johnson retorted, they moved on, and eventually that segment ended.
Some time later, they came back for another “down”, with another current topic on the agenda: Jason Taylor’s comments that Shawne Merriman and his sixteen sacks don’t deserve to win the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award because Merriman was suspended for a positive steroid test earlier this season. According to his rant on Bonds, Bayless should have been delighted with Taylor for speaking out on the subject, thankful that a clean NFL player was standing up to a league-mate who is known to have engaged in some wrongdoing. It was the perfect opportunity to acknowledge a professional athlete for standing up for what is right. Right?
Sorry, that’s not how Skip operates. He immediately downplayed Merriman’s positive test and suspension, insisting that the All-Pro linebacker has been tested “almost every day” since his return, so he can’t still be using anything illegal, and he’s still performing at an insanely dominant level, so he must deserve recognition as the best defensive player in football. Never mind the fact that there are known performance enhancing substances that the NFL doesn’t test for; given the rate at which the dark side of chemistry moves, we can only imagine what products are now out there, readily available if you know where to look, that the administrators of professional sports leagues haven’t even heard of yet. Even if Merriman is being tested every single day – even if Roger Goodell is standing there and watching him go in the cup - there is no guarantee that he hasn’t continued to use something illegal.
Barry Bonds is not blameless in the whole steroids mess. He admitted to the BALCO grand jury that he had “unknowingly” used the Cream and the Clear after being misled by his trainer, but insists that he never intentionally used performance-enhancing substances. If Bayless is hard on him, it’s because he is actually doing a decent job of representing the majority of baseball fans, most of whom feel that they “know” Bonds is guilty of wrongdoing in the same way they “know” O.J. killed Ron and Nicole – there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence, nothing hard, but it doesn’t matter. We made up our minds long ago that he must be guilty, so it must be true.
Bayless’s response to the two similar stories – castigation of Bonds, acceptance of Merriman – speaks volumes about the way steroid issues in their respective leagues are handled by the mainstream media. In baseball, a positive drug test is met with anger and the desire to force the action. It is a problem so important, we are told, that the federal government had to become involved, which is somewhat like a disagreement between two children in which a parent must intervene. When the same thing happens in football, however, most of the stories deal with the effect the player’s upcoming suspension will have on his team. There might be talk of government investigations, but nothing too serious, nothing to get excited about, because the media will keep it low-key – no T.O. treatment for NFL steroid cases, whatever you do – and eventually it will go away.
Forget devil’s advocate, forget the role of the fan: on Cold Pizza today, Skip Bayless had a chance to shine a light on this inconsistency, to be one of the few media members willing to step up and say, “Why do we treat these two sports so differently?” Ultimately, though, he did his level best to further the same old line of thought, underplaying the steroid problem in the NFL while blowing Major League Baseball’s issues out of proportion.
William Shakespeare wrote, “Some men are born with greatness, some men achieve greatness, and some men have greatness thrust upon them.” It might be melodramatic to assert that Bayless had greatness thrust upon him this morning and turned it away, but the fact is that he had the chance to make a difference, and he refused.
When Nomar Garciaparra left the Red Sox at the 2004 trading deadline, it was not under the best of terms. He had spent 8 ½ seasons with the team that drafted him out of Georgia Tech in 1994, winning the Rookie of the Year Award in 1997, back-to-back batting titles in 1999 and 2000 and finishing second in the 1998 MVP voting, yet the front office decided that he wasn’t the type of player who could help bring a World Series trophy to Boston. So Theo Epstein and Co. engineered a four team deal that sent Nomar to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for Doug Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera, two guys who played key roles down the stretch as the Sox beat the Angels, Yankees and Cardinals to claim the team’s first World Series title in 86 years.
Nomar hasn’t exactly gone on to fame and fortune since the trade; he’s spent time on the disabled list in each of the last three seasons, although he was healthy enough in 2006 to hit twenty homeruns and drive in 93 runs for the Dodgers. On Saturday he filed for free agency, a move that could lead to him joining his fourth team in four years – a strangely nomadic existence for a player once thought to be the best right-handed hitter since Joe DiMaggio.
Here’s the question: would it make sense for Nomar to return to the Red Sox in 2007? The key, to me, lies in three things: Garciaparra’s feelings toward Boston’s management, the type of money and contract he’s looking for and the future plans of Mark Loretta and Dustin Pedroia. After the events leading up to his 2004 trade, especially the part in which the team very publicly courted rival shortstop Alex Rodriguez, it would not be surprising if Nomar wanted nothing to do with the Red Sox or the city of Boston ever again. It’s not all that different from any relationship gone sour: they had some good years together, then one of them met someone new and things were never the same again. One key to making a new deal happen would be Nomar’s ability to forgive the team for going after Rodriguez and the team’s ability to forgive Nomar for pouting during the first half of the season.
The second consideration in any deal for Nomar is the size of his contract. When the Red Sox offered four years and $60 million some years ago, he was one of the game’s premier shortstops, a member of the new breed of sluggers who was redefining the position. Unfortunately, injuries have limited him recently, to the point that he made the Ernie Banks shift in 2006 and played 118 of his 122 games at first base. Although Kevin Youkilis performed capably at that position for the Red Sox this season, his greatest strength is his versatility: the Greek God Of Walks saw action at four different defensive spots, meaning a shift to second is possible. Still, the fact is that Nomar no longer plays one of the premier defensive positions and is no longer a star; if he wants to come back to Boston, he will have to settle for less than star money.
And then there is Loretta, who came to Boston in a trade with the Padres last off-season and played a solid second base all season. Like Youkilis, Loretta is capable of playing all four infield positions, with over one hundred career games at each, although he has spent the majority of his time at second. If the Sox want him back, the return of Nomar becomes even more likely, especially since Loretta is likely to command a far lower salary than the more famous Garciaparra. A further sticking point is the fact that either player will likely be a one year fill-in for prospect Dustin Pedroia, who earned some time with the big club late last season but may need some more seasoning before hitting the majors full time in 2008.
Basically, in order for Nomar Garciaparra to return to Boston, the following will have to take place:
1) He will have to make peace with Red Sox management over past issues.
2) He will have to either accept a one-year contract or a multi-year deal with the understanding that his defensive position will change at the needs of the team. In either case, that contract will likely be far below what he believes to be his true market value.
3) Mark Loretta will have to sign elsewhere and Dustin Pedroia will require another season at the AAA level.
The bottom line is this: there is no way Nomar Garciaparra returns to Boston for the 2007 season and beyond (sorry I made you read this whole thing just to find this out). Too much would have to fall into place and he is probably happier on the West Coast, where he grew up, than he ever could have been in Boston, especially after the media and fan pressure started to get more intense. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a Red Sox uniform again someday – if nothing else, he was a classy player who represented the organization well during his time here.
Earlier this week, my friend Trish, who I met in 2002 when we were both interns in the Research Department at the Baseball Hall of Fame, celebrated her 28th birthday, which got me thinking. Several years ago, I compiled an “All-Time Todd Team”, fittingly named because it consisted entirely of players named “Todd”. (Why Todd? In honor of Trish, who reveres an inordinate number of players with that particular name. Yeah, it’s really that simple. I used to have a lot of free time on my hands.)
(Note: This all took place before I was fired from my one and only job in professional baseball. The name of the guy who pulled the trigger on my sports career? Yep – it was Todd.)
Anyhow, since Tuesday was her birthday, I thought I would resurrect and update the “All-Time Todd Team”. The list is restricted to players with the first name Todd (no middle names, please) who have played at the major league level. So without further ado…
The All-Time Todd Team
Catcher: Todd Pratt (1992 – present) – Philadelphia, Chicago Cubs, New York Mets, Atlanta
Pratt, affectionately known as Tank to his dozens of fans, is the prototypical backup catcher, with fourteen seasons in the big leagues through 2006. In that time, he has never played more than eighty games in a season, come to bat more than 175 times or hit more than ten homeruns (although he did post a .311 batting average once – in 106 at-bats). Essentially, he has been paid more than $6 million since 1992 to be mediocre every five days.
So why is Pratt the starting catcher on our team? One very simple reason: Trish absolutely loves him (to the point that she once named her car “Tank”), for reasons that cannot be totally explained in rational terms. Is it the mysteriously vacant perma-grin? The way he could casually saunter out of a burning building (and look cool doing it)? The fact that he might not have combed his hair since 1996? Could be all of that things and more – the world may never know.
Backup: Todd Hundley (1990 – 2003) – New York Mets, Los Angeles, Chicago Cubs
Still the Mets’ single-season homerun record holder with 41 in 1996 (since tied by Carlos Beltran), Hundley was actually a two-time All-Star in 1996 and 1997 before completely falling off the face of the earth. He was last seen hitting .182 with two homeruns as Paul Lo Duca’s backup in Los Angeles in 2003.
First Base: Todd Helton (1997 – present) – Colorado Rockies
The best player to ever come out of the University of Tennessee, Helton was an offensive beast for Colorado from 1998 – 2004. His numbers have declined in the last two seasons as the Rockies have taken measures to reduce the inflated numbers that characterized their early existence (most notably the act of placing game balls in a humidor prior to use). Despite the drop in his power totals, his career .331 average remains tops among active players.
Backup: Todd Benzinger (1987 – 1995) – Boston, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco
Okay, this one’s for me. Benzinger was a key player on the 1988 Red Sox team, which has been well documented as one of my favorite squads ever. He wasn’t one of my personal favorites – it had something to do with his strangely shaped head and weird looking teeth – but the trade that sent him to Cincinnati yielded immediate dividends, as Nick Esasky exploited Fenway Park to the tune of thirty homeruns and 108 RBI in 1989.
Second Base: Todd Walker (1996 – present) – Minnesota, Colorado, Cincinnati, Boston, Chicago Cubs, San Diego
It never fails to amaze me that Todd Walker played only one season with the Red Sox – seemed like he was in town for at least three or four years. Might have been because he fit right in with the “Cowboy Up” team of 2003 and would have been at home with the “Idiots” in 2004. As it was, he ended up being one of about thirty-seven players on the 2006 Padres who had spent time in Boston.
In addition to his name, his qualifications for this team are moderate scruffiness and seeming cluelessness, which in some dating circles apparently marks one as a good catch.
Third Base: Todd Zeile (1989 – 2004) – St. Louis, Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Florida, Texas, New York Mets, Colorado, New York Yankees, Montreal
The co-captain (along with Pratt), Zeile set a major league record by homering for eleven different major league teams in his sixteen-year career. Surprisingly – to me, anyway – he never appeared in an All-Star Game despite finishing his playing days with over 2,000 hits, 250 homeruns and 1,000 RBI.
It was actually Zeile who inspired the update for the All-Time Todd Team. Apparently he was recently on TV in New York with Keith Hernandez, who kept cutting him off. For some reason, this infuriated Trish, who emailed me to say, “I can take a lot in this world, but no one…I mean no one…cuts off Todd Zeile! Never!” So yeah, that pretty much says it all. Don’t #### with Todd Zeile.
Shortstop: Todd Cruz (1978 – 84) – Philadelphia, Kansas City, California, Chicago White Sox, Seattle, Baltimore
Like so many of his fellow Todds, Cruz was nothing special as a player, with a career high of sixteen homeruns and a .237 batting average. Still, his name is Todd, which is sort of an instant qualifier for this team, and he was once traded for Rance Mulliniks. Any time you have the chance to invoke the name Rance Mulliniks in a piece of writing, you have to take it. Sounds like the name of a Steven Seagal character.
Outfield: Todd Dunwoody (1997 – 2002) – Florida, Kansas City, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland
Why isn’t Todd Dunwoody a major league baseball player anymore? Could have something to do with poor patience at the plate: in 295 career games, he walked 51 times and struck out 234. Not good. On the bright side, it’s completely possible that he received a World Series ring as a member of the 1997 Marlins, although I’m not sure if nineteen games and fifty at-bats was enough to earn him that honor.
Outfield: Todd Hollandsworth (1995 – present) – Los Angeles, Colorado, Texas, Florida, Chicago Cubs, Atlanta, Cleveland, Cincinnati
