Awhile back I posted on who I thought should and should not go into the Hall of Fame. ESPN has an article on the subject, a roundtable with a lot of baseball guys. It’s worth a look if you’re interested in such things. I’ve refined my thinking, by the way, and in the poll (there’s a link to it on the page), I voted for 7 players:
Wade Boggs
Ryne Sandberg
Goose Gossage
Bruce Sutter
Andre Dawson (had a change of heart)
Bert Blyleven
Jim Rice
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6 Responses to “Baseball Hall of Fame Balloting”
Uh, where is Davie Concepcion????
An essential cog in the Big Red Machine!
I think you missed one there sir!
Warren throckmorton ~ Dec 22, 2004 at 9:42 pm
I can’t believe you didn’t vote for Chili Davis or Tony Philips, or even Otis Nixon; I mean come on, ANYONE that scary looking should be in a hall of fame, right?
Seriously though, my votes go to Boggs, Garvey, Gossage, John, Sandberg, and Sutter.
Paul - SteelerDirtFreak ~ Dec 23, 2004 at 7:55 am
Where is Davie Concepcion? Probably in the Dominican Republic…of course he as an essential cog in the Big Red Machine, and so was Cesar Geronimo and George Foster and Don Gullett and a few others, but that doesn’t make them Hall-of-Famers. Concepcion had himself a very nice career, but if the bar for the Hall dips low enough to include everyone who had a nice little career, then hey, Katie, bar the door. Good player, even very good player, but not great, which ought to define Hall-of-Famers.
Now to Paul…Steve GARVEY? I mean, I can see Tommy John, though he wouldn’t get my vote, but GARVEY? Why? Jim Rice has two MVP’s and was for several years the most feared hitter in baseball. Andre Dawson played in a park not conducive to hitters for most of his career, played on bad knees for nearly all of it, and still was a great player, a borderliner, to be sure, but to me, way ahead of Garvey. Bert Blyleven is FIFTH all-time in strikeouts, and had history’s greatest curve ball. If I’d named the next five in line that I’d have voted for, John would have made it, but not Steve Garvey.
Byron ~ Dec 23, 2004 at 10:01 am
Alright I’ll grant you that those other players you mentioned were important to the Big Red Machine but would the Machine have been so dominant without Concepcion? I don thin so.
Stats don show heez defenz – He was the premier shortstop of that era, arguably as good as Ozzie…
Warren throckmorton ~ Dec 23, 2004 at 1:00 pm
No, probably wouldn’t have been–he was a VERY GOOD player! And you’re right about defense as well; I believe that HOF voters disparage defense compared to offense as well. I don’t know; some of this is of course subjective; it just doesn’t seem to me that he quite rises to the HOF level. He may be the best SS not in the HOF–or he may not; Alan Trammell is a guy in his class, it seems to me, really good, but great? Just a tick shy, I think.
Byron ~ Dec 23, 2004 at 1:13 pm
Well, I DID pick the top 7 vote-getters (although only Boggs and Ryno got in–they were the two most obvious, of course). For the record, Dave Concepcion finished 15th in the voting, with a little over 10% of voters choosing him. Not quite Ozzie-like…
Byron ~ Jan 4, 2005 at 11:31 pm