Dan, of course Carlton was revered in Philly. That’s where he PLAYED for most of his career.
Subjective means it’s open to personal opinion, objective means the opposite. So the LPGA HOF is based on an objective criterion: number of wins. The others are based on the personal opinions of the voters.
I was talking about Murray, who had 3255 hits, 504 HR, and 1917 RBI. As many noted, he’s one of THREE guys who have 3000/500. There are a few voters who are stupid and always vote no (Carlton got about 95% of the vote), but Murray had a larger number of people vote against him.
The writers don’t have to explain their votes, so they’re not open to widespread criticism. I’m not sure we even find out who voted for whom unless they choose to volunteer that info.
There are ‘class act’ awards in other sports. But as far as I know, Lady Byng didn’t break any color barriers and didn’t have to endure death threats to do… whatever she did, if anything.
Yeah, but that’s not always a good thing. The press there is notorious for being hard on their players, and Carlton was an exception to the rule.
Besides, you’re more likely to get accurate coverage from local press because the sportswriters are around those particular players more often. The national press - or press from other towns - only sees these players on a limited basis.
Yeah, you’re right. I got them completely backward. I’m wrong.
Understood; my thinking, though, is that although not being a talkative player isn’t necessarily helpful to a player’s relationship with the media, it’s also not necessarily a major hindrance. After he retired, Murray was described by more than one writer as a class act who simply didn’t talk much to the media.
I thought they did, but maybe they don’t. I do recall that when the Cy Young balloting occurred this past year, a couple of writers didn’t put Eric Gagne down because they didn’t think a reliever should win. I’m not sure how their names were made public knowledge (i.e., did they “out” themselves, or was the voting made public by the league?). Of course, that award isn’t nearly the same as the Hall voting.
That much is true. What did this person do? Heck, you could take any of the NHL awards, and the average fan wouldn’t have a clear idea of what the person for whom the award was named actually did. That’s one, the Masterton award is another. Now, we all know what Jackie Robinson did, and I am certain that his tribulations were much harsher than anyhing Lady Byng could have done (:)) But it’s the concept that’s the same. You’re honoring class in sports. Sure, there are a lot of awards (it seems to me that the NHL has more) in baseball, but this is one special award that isn’t so dependent on stats.
Someone asked about the Clemente award, and that’s a good point. It does cover a lot of these bases. There’s no need to have two of them if both awards cover the same territory.
True about Clemente… I think that award is specifically intended for players who do a lot of charity work, but it’s hard to separate that from some of the traits proposed for this award.
Well, no. But if you’re a star player who the media wants to talk to and you refuse, they’re more likely to be negative towards you. After all, you’re hindering them from doing their jobs - covering the team, getting the story, etc.
I heard that as well. But I think that’s the exception and not the rule.
That’s certainly true. For the annual awards, I’m sure this comes into play on a certain level - I’m just not convinced it’s a very high level. For the Hall voting, I don’t think it matters a whole lot either, especially since at least five seasons have passed since the guy last played, and time alone tempers most ill will.
I wonder if whoever wrote the ESPN editorial realizes that the Clemente award covers a lot of the same territory that his/her proposed award would. It would be demeaning to both men if the awards reflected the same traits.
This has been hashed out quite thoroughly, so I don’t have much to add, other than this:
Who in MLB actually fits those criteria?
Courage? Except for the suggestion about a gay player coming out, or possibly a Cuban who risks his life by leaving the country, who displays (or needs to display) courage?
Dignity, excellence, respect, sportsmanship - Yes, we can identify these, no issue here.
Sacrifice? Who, these days, sacrifices anything by being a Major League Baseball player?
Times are just different nowadays. I don’t think that anyone will again face the challenges that Jackie Robinson faced, with the possible exception of a gay player coming out, but that would only happen once.
I think this, while a wonderful idea (especially the part about wearing 42 for a year) would degenerate into a “nice guy with talent” award, going anually to a player like Cal Ripken or Tony Gwynn, who win plenty of awards as it is.
Interestingly, the one player I can think of who is displaying courage and sacrifice today is Kaz Sasaki, who is leaving MLB to return with his family to Japan out of concern for their lifestyle.
Stupid award. It’s not FOR anything. If a ballplayer takes a stand for abortion, or AGAINST Howard Dean, or donates his testicles to medical research into why new shoes feel so tight, is he being courageous? Is the award for having any social position at all? Are all social positions equally principled?
IOW, does basaeball really need to get into privileging some types of social activity and not others? Since we can’t honor every social principle, if baseball just happens to award the JR trophy to someone other than the holder of a particular principle for several years running, for perfectly good reasons having to do with probablility and an abundance of candidates, does that expose baseball to all sorts of charges of slighting that particular cause?
Why should MLB care about promoting social causes, anyway? They have a hard enough time figuring out which ballplayers should make the All-Star team.
I don’t understand this. “Murray and Henderson spilled the beans on Carter”?? I don’t believe those men were ever teammates, were they?
And who was Henderson a creep to, anyway? Or Murray?
The issue here is not what FANS thought of Carlton, but what the MEDIA thought of him, and they didn’t like him at all after he stopped talking to them in 1973. The Philly media might have taken it a little easier on him, but then, we aren’t talking about just having a player’s local media vote on this either, are we?
(Shrug) To be honest, I thought every baseball fan knew this stuff. Murray always had a rough relationship with the press, and yet any firsthand account I have ever heard of read of him by teammates and managers is that he’s a class act through and through. Carlton’s story is quite well documented.
The issue here isn’t what the fans think. It’s what the media thinks.
And the notion that Baylor was beloved because he got hit by pitches a lot is nonsense. Ron Hunt got hit by pitches a lot and everyone hated him. Baylor was beloved because he was tremendously good at dealing with the media, and always portrayed himself as a strong, authoritative leader type. He didn’t become really famous for HBPs until the mid-80s, when he (IIRC) set the American League record in 1986, when he played for the Red Sox and they won the pennant. By that time, however, I’d been reading for years about how he was a “Veteran leader” and “managerial timber.” He was one of those player who liked holding “kangaroo courts” to fine teammates for missing signs or not moving runners over, stuff like that - a once-common way for veterans to bully rookies, more than anything else. The press absolutely ate it up.
Gosh almighty, you don’t remember this stuff? The press ALWAYS portrayed Trammell as the savvy veteran and Whitaker as a flake. That was always, always the image given of the two men. Trammell was smart and hard-working; Whitaker was weird and it was always sort of hinted he didn’t try very hard. Whitaker WAS a funny guy; once, he forgot to bring his uniform to the 1985 All-Star game, and he had to wear a uniform made out of souvenir uniform parts. He is also famous for once going on the DL after hurting himself dancing at a club.
Dan, I didn’t say that. You’re hittin’ the straw man pretty hard there. My fairly clearly worded position was that the press treated Ripken and Murray remarkably differently, given the fact that both were great players, playing for the same team (for most of Murray’s career.) Ripken was treated as a God; Murray was treated as a bit of a jerk. Why? I don’t see any particular good reason - except that Murray did not deal with the media very well.
That is simply, blatantly untrue. Mets FANS may have booed him, but you know just as well as I do that until 1989, Rose was heralded by the national press as an icon of baseball, the very living example of how baseball should be played. (to be fair, he did hustle.) He was WORSHIPPED by the press.
So what’s the benefit? Why incur the risk at all?
I really don’t think this award will do much to memorialize Robinson. What will it accomplish?
Well, since hardly anyone notices the Comeback Player of the Year award, it’s more irrelevant than anything else. Baseball fans largely don’t care about it.
And how about the possibility that someone will be given an award for their humanitarian nature (not to mention high moral character and the fact that the award is given by a religious gorganization), then be caught not long after with a prostitute?
I also think that if such an award is instituted, the first openly gay player will receive it. But I’m not sure that’s going to happen any time soon, especially when you have Mike Piazza calling a press conference to announce that he’s straight. And he plays in the not-so-conservative New York, so…
While I quibble with some of RickJay’s specifics (Steve Carlton is NOT a prince of a guy who was pilloried for shunning the press; he’s a stupid, foul-mouthed, antisemitic conspiracy theorist who was SMART never to tell the press the idiotic things he really thought- or he’d have gotten the John Rocker treatment decades ago), his overall point is well taken.
Fact is, we don’t know, we CAN’T know who the good and bad people in sports (or any other walk of life) are. Remember how, a few years back, during Super Bowl week, Falcons DB Eugene Robinson was given an award as the NFL’s exemplar of Christian values, and was arrested just days later for soliciting hookers? I’m sure Robinson SEEMED like a great guy and an ideal family man… but we can’t ever really know, can we?
Heck, a few years ago, if you had polled sportswriters and asked them to name the finest, most upstanding man in sports, almost all would have said Kirby Puckett. We now know, of course, that Puckett was a lecher and a thug- possibly even a rapist. So, on what basis would the media have argued that Kirby was a saint? No logical reason at all! They simply LIKED Kirby because he always had a smile and a quote for them.
We fans CAN’T know what our favorite athletes are really like. And even the media get only glimpses into the character of the athletes they cover. Unless they follow a guy around 24/7, they have no clue whether the seemingly saintly athlete they write about is all he appears to be. And it isn’t their job to make that judgment in any case.
Some years, it’s tough enough to figure out which pitcher really deserves a Cy Young Award. Why ask a writer to judge those pitchers’ hearts and souls, too?
The Comeback award is subjective, but it’s often pretty clear who had a bad season one year (or was hurt) and had a good year the next. I can’t recall ever hearing about a controversial Comeback Player of the Year. Of course, part of that is because hardly anybody cares about it.