WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT
Andre Dawson, one of the weaker Hall of Fame candidates on this year’s ballot, made it into the Hall, but Bert Blyleven missed by five votes, the same number of blank ballots cast. Roberto Alomar will have to wait, just missing as well. That’s fine, too, so long as the reasons had to do with perceptions of his performance or his expectorating and not because of some phony "no one gets in on the first year" dogma that has no basis in anything except small-mindedness. If you think a player is a Hall of Famer, then vote for him. Otherwise, get over yourself.
Sometimes I look at the dates of Hall of Fame induction and compare them to the players’ death dates. Some of them got decades to enjoy the honor, others just a few years, and of course several of them never had the pleasure of knowing they’d made it in. In many cases, those that only got the posthumous honor or the briefest enjoyment did so because knowledge of the game evolved. That’s a positive thing. A few others, though, were deprived because the voters have ever been jealous of their own ignorance. Having the right to vote isn’t a license to capriciousness, but a responsibility (and yes, that applies to the Hall of Fame and any other election that you might happen to vote in). These ballplayers worked very hard to achieve this award, and while they shouldn’t be voted in lightly, they shouldn’t be kept out for arbitrary reasons -- any of us could be hit by a truck tomorrow.
It was a tough year for the best candidates. Jack Morris finished fourth in the balloting, though he came nowhere close to election. Barry Larkin, one of the best shortstops during the pre-Jeter years, and a player not dissimilar to Jeter in many ways, was right behind him. Edgar Martinez got 36.2 percent of the vote, but that’s not unexpected. It’s going to take some years of lobbying to get past the bonehead-types who don’t accept the legitimacy of the designated hitter. Those that continue to ignore Alan Trammell apparently slept through the 1980s. Any Yankee who played on teams that were constantly trying to catch up to the Tigers can tell you what kind of a player Trammell was, and how many championships they would have won that decade had he been a Bomber instead of Bobby Meacham.
A similar assessment can be made about Tim Raines: if you aren’t voting for him, you missed the 1980s. Runs created per game by Raines: 6.6. Runs created per game by Andre Dawson: 5.4. That’s not to say that Dawson was a bad player. He was a very, very good one, though only for a short time -- the years that he played an excellent center field for the Expos. He hit .292/.329/.503 away from the tough Stadium Olympique. The turf killed his knees, however, forced a move to right field, and after that he was a decent player at best, with one of the worst MVP award selections ever bolstering his resume for those that don’t care to think too hard.
But for the center field portion of Dawson’s career, you could condemn this induction as part of the general watering-down of standards which has taken place with the induction of such limited players as Jim Rice and Tony Perez and may eventually lead to the enshrinement of Dave Parker. We’re trapped in a downward spiral of reductionism in which the mediocre are deified at the expense of the good.
My gosh, it’s just like the government.
HINSKE
The Braves made a good decision in signing Eric Hinske to their ballclub. Their only problem is that they might need two of him. Troy Glaus is set to play first base, Chipper Jones at third, but both are injury risks. If Jones is hurt, Glaus can slide over and replace him, with Hinske taking over at first. If Glaus is hurt, same deal -- Hinske plays. He could also play third if the Braves can tolerate his glove there, but Chipper isn’t a very good fielder and they’ve tolerated him for years. If Glaus and Jones gets hurt at the same time, they’ll have to clone Hinske. It’s a real risk.
The Yankees’ bench gets a little weaker with Hinske’s departure, but as Brian Cashman showed last year, the bench with which you start the season is not necessarily the one with which you finish, and veteran spare parts can be pried away from the also-ran teams at low cost. It was nice to have Hinke’s versatility and lefty pop off the bench, but he was also a bit of a luxury given the team’s starters -- he did a lot of sitting in the second half. There are still some hitters out there on the free agent market with a little pop who might be willing to accept a bench role with the Yankees, the Ankiels, Baldellis, Blalocks, and so on. The Yankees are well served by Cashman’s waiting—as spring training creeps closer, these players will find themselves in even more of a buyer’s market.
