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At left, Jim Rice; at right, Rickey Henderson. Both men will be inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame in July. |
As usual, news centers on the players who didn't get picked
of TheColumnists.com
There are 539 sportswriters,
including this retired one, who cast ballots sending Rickey Henderson
and Jim Rice to the Baseball Hall of Fame in bucolic Cooperstown,
New York.
There were 286 names and plaques on the wall of the stately Museum
ahead of them, from exalted Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson and Ty
Cobb to doubtful entries Walter O’Malley, Bobby Doerr and
Bill Mazeroski.
As always, the Baseball Hall of Fame election announcement isn’t
as much about the ones who got in as it is about the ones who
are left out.
Henderson was a first ballot lock with his landslide election
netting 94.8 per cent of the votes cast for his explosive play
over 25 years with nine teams as Rice slipped in on his final
try in the writers’ vote after 16 seasons with the Boston
Red Sox and 76.4 per cent of the 2008 vote.
These two names will be added to the list of the best and the
brightest in emotional ceremonies before 10,000 enthused fans
on July 26.
Henderson and Rice will accept the glory in person while family
members will glow in the glory for late Yankee and Cleveland
second baseman Joe Gordon, enshrined in December by a special
committee.
The 62 living Hall of Fame members couldn’t agree on a new
name to represent their judgment so they remain without a selection
since the honor of naming a forgotten veteran player fell to
the members of this exclusive club.
As Henderson, Rice and Gordon survivors are feted in July, Pete
Rose, Mark McGwire, Joan Hodges, 37-year widow of Brooklyn hero
first baseman Gil Hodges and Marvin Miller, the most revolutionary
figure in 20th century baseball, are locked out of the game’s
Valhalla.
“I just think it is a shame,” said Joan Hodges through
her tears last month when her husband’s name was skipped
again as an honoree of the game’s greatest.
Hodges has received more Hall of Fame votes than any person in
the game’s history but never more than the needed 75 per
cent in any one year. He has been on the ballot continuously
since his death in 1972.
Miller received a miniscule 25 per cent of the votes of a special
12-man committee in 2007, the final year of his active eligibility.
After that insulting amount cast by writers, former players and
team executives, Miller wrote the Hall of Fame a letter expressing
his regret and requesting his name be dropped from consideration.
His years of leadership at the Major League Baseball Players
Association led to the huge salaries of today and the excitement
the game has seen over the last quarter of a century.
Perhaps the most interesting Hall of Fame vote cast in 2008 was
recorded next to the name of McGwire, the bulked up first baseman
of the A’s and Cards who hit 583 home runs, eighth on the
all time list behind Barry Bonds’ 762.
He was caught using a body building substance and sealed his
doom for eventual induction by announcing before a 2005 Congressional
committee that, “I’m not here to talk about the past,”
a dictum offered up by his unwise legal team.
Even with the 583 homers and even without a steroid discovery,
McGwire would have been a fringe Hall of Famer. There are too
many clean players on the horizon to ever move McGwire into that
charmed circle of superstars.
Now we come to Rose and his 4,256 hits. Rose could say “bye,
bye, Ty” as he broke Cobb’s long-held mark but he never
could say, “Yes, I gambled on baseball and I’m sorry.”
Rose could write a book (or a writer could do it for him) expressing
some chagrin at his gambling but never quite owning up to the
facts as laid out painfully in a long baseball probe.
One of the best of colorful character Rose’s lines as he
entertained fans for a quarter of a century was, “I’ve
written more books than I read.”
His final book never really cleared the air or moved his case
forward. No matter. Rose fills the streets with anxious fans
every year in Cooperstown during induction weekend as he signs
autographs, an appearance the real Hall of Famers find rather
revolting as he steals attention from them.
So it seems clear that Henderson and Rice will shine in the summer
sun at the Cooperstown shrine in July while McGwire, Rose, Miller
and Joan Hodges are kept away from the game’s shrine.
Oh yeah. And there is also Shoeless Joe (“Say it ain’t
so, Joe”) Jackson, another outsider for another day.
©2009 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This
column first posted Jan. 19, 2009.
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