That’s a good point about gambling, if many players gambled on the game, trust would vaporize. Actually, I think there’s a bit of an inverse relationship at work.
If one person bets on baseball it has a very small effect, assuming of course that he isn’t throwing games. If many gamble, the potential effect on the validity of the game is huge.
If many people take steroids, they’re all on the same playing field, so to speak, and the games are fair. If one person takes steroids, he skews the playing field for his team, and comprimises the game.
The fact of the matter is that steroids probably kept McGwire’s career from ending due to injury. Even if they didn’t make him a better ballplayer, it appears to me that the reason he started using them was to try to recover from his back and foot problems.
Having looked at the numbers, I’m actually inclined to think McGwire is not a Grade A candidate anyway. He had some awesome years, but those years are in inflated-offense years and his career was very short for a Hall of Famer. Tim Raines, by comparison, is a much better candidate. Craig Biggio and Lou Whitaker are more qualified. Darrell Evans is comparable.
I’d vote him in if you gave me a ballot, but I wouldn’t be appalled if he missed by a few votes.
I don’t trust that poll. It’s the “when he becomes eligible” line. I’ve seen a lot of voters who say they absolutely will not vote for him the first year, but will after that - something that might not be reflected in that poll.
Rice has to go back in time and not be such a prick to the reporters or his teammates. Nothing else will help - he’s got some good numbers but that’s all.
The sportswriters who vote for the HOF should grow some stones and apply the “good sportsmanship” clause to Bonds, McQwire, et al. when they become eligible. I think it would entirely appropriate for them to blackball all suspected steroid users form the HOF.
That’s the beauty part about the elections–they’re not just about the numbers. I’m the biggest sports-stats-freak going, mind you, but you can’t look at the numbers alone. If I were to hit 500 HRs because I was able somehow to hypnotize pitchers into serving me up gopher balls, that would be unsportsmanlike, and I should therefore be barred from the HOF, whatever the numbers in themselves say about what I did.
It’s a disgrace that anyone applies numerical cutoffs for the HOF while suspending common sense. Maybe we can’t send these guys to jail, or expunge their records from the books, or boo them once they’ve retired, but we sure as hell can keep them from having a plaque next to the ballplayers who played the game fairly and honestly. “Fairly” and “honestly” aren’t legal terms but they’re terms that should be applied to anyone honored with a plaque in Cooperstown.
A whole bunch of the 23,642 other outfielders that had the same value Rice did. Well, maybe not that many, but there is nothing in his career that lifts him up from a very good player to a Hall of Fame player.
Really? How many of those 23, 642 other outfielders have won an MVP award? That right there is an indication that once upon a time the writers thought more of him then than they do now.
While I think that This Year’s Model is severely undervaluing Rice’s career, I never claimed he was the BEST EVER, or anything like that. Just that he was on a par with McGwire.
Let me get this straight: Rice was a prick with good numbers so he’s out, Bonds is a prick with better numbers so he might get in?
Roger Maris won two MVP awards and is not in. Vida Blue won an MVP and a Cy Young (in the same year) and is not in. Do you believe everyone who has ever won an MVP award should be in? Even Jose Canseco and Denny McLain?
Not at all, but lumping a player like Jim Rice in with the herd is just not right. At one point in his career he was the best player in all of baseball. Maris should be in, Blue should be in, and were it not for Denny McLain throwing his career away he would be in. I think that all things being equal (or approximately equal) an MVP award or a Cy Young award gets you some preference.
If Vida Blue should be in, he’s a weird place to start; there are probably forty or fifty pitchers just as good as Vida Blue who aren’t in the Hall of Fame, and some of them are better. If Blue, why not Bret Saberhagen? Orel Hershiser? Mickey Lolich? Dave Stieb? Ron Guidry? Why not Luis Tiant, who won more games than Blue, had a higher winning percentage, pitched more innings with a better ERA, struck out more men, walked fewer, had more 20-win seasons, pitched better in the postseason and was a better hitter? I mean, El Tiante should get his plaque first, right?
As with all Hall of Fame discussions, the right questions are not being asked. It’s not “Is Vida Blue of Hall of Famer,” or “Is Jim Rice a Hall of Famer,” because those questions call for an essentially arbitrary definition of what a Hall of Famer is. You can’t just say well, it’s anyone who’s ever won an MVP Award and didn’t go to prison, because then you’d have to elect Jim Konstanty, George Bell, and Zoilo Versalles. And awards are subjective and some are obviously stupid choices, like Andre Dawson’s MVP Award or Pete Vuckovich’s Cy Young Award. (Not that Blue didn’t deserve his awards.)
The question is: Is Vida Blue the best pitcher in the history of baseball who isn’t in the Hall of Fame? Is Jim Rice the greatest player, or at least the greatest outfielder, in baseball history who is eligible but not yet in? If the answers are yes, let’s put them in. If the answers are no, then why would anyone advocate the selection of Vida Blue or Jim Rice when they should be picking someone else first?
Wrong. Only if they met the standards at least as well as others who are in, or else you’re just lowering the standard. If you believe in and apply standards at all, there will always be a fair number of guys who are “the best at their position who aren’t in the Hall”. Let *them * in, and you face the question all over again for the next batch. Blue and Rice just aren’t as worthy as the Hall members because they fall short of the established standards, sorry. The Hall already has a couple of hundred members, so it isn’t overly exclusive, either.
The standards aren’t all, or even mostly, numerical or even tangible, either, btw. Sportsmanship and character matter, more so to some than to others, but they’re in the instructions to the voters all the same.