Give 'em Some Stankeye!

It's time for everybody's favorite...TGIF links! Here's a collection of random tidbits, most baseball-related, some not. I've also concluded that January sucks, at least in a baseball sense. Only one more month until pitchers and catchers report. One...more...month.

--Today on ESPN.com, Rob Neyer chatted with fans about which pitcher would be better, our own wunderkind Tim Lincecum, or Brewer uberprospect Yovani Gallardo. Lincecum has hellacious stuff and destroyed everything in his path in the minors, but Gallardo is younger and has shown better control. The answer of who will be better isn't exactly as clear-cut as we Giants fans might like.

It makes for an interesting read, and some good points are made, especially in counter to all the people freaking out about Lincecum's small frame, and the injury risk involved, and also just about the general unpredictability of pitchers. He's a pitcher and he exists, therefore he's an injury risk. It happens. Some chatters brought up the example of Mark Prior, who was considered a brilliant physical specimen who could never get hurt, then...got hurt.

Another point raised is that just because Lincecum's delivery is bizarre doesn't mean it's dangerous. It seems like most of his power comes from his lower body, which would take a lot of strain off of the arm. Power pitchers like Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens had notoriously strong legs, which enabled them to throw hard as hell, and both those guys pitcher forever.

I also realize from reading this chat that some fans just don't live in reality. A majority of the people submitting questions come from the Bay Area, understandably, and some think Lincecum is a top ten pitcher right now. I'm just as excited about Timmy as anybody else, but let's get a hold of ourselves here. He's still young and he's thrown just 146 major league innings. Given the adjustments hitters are likely to make against him, and again given that pesky (knock on wood) injury risk just by him being a pitcher, there are bound to be some bumps in the road before true greatness.

--I try to stay away from Baseball Think Factory, really I do. It's not because the site has a bunch of bad baseball writing or anything. Au contrere, BTF is home to some of the richest baseball analysis out there by some of the most amazing fans of the game. It constantly blows my mind how smart a lot of these guys are.

No, I try to stay away because once I get on, I can't get off. First there are the front page articles, then there are Dan Szymborski's ZiPs projections, then there's the News Blog, which points out some really crappy articles from around the country, then skewers them. One interesting baseball thread leads to another, and before I know it, I've wasted away five hours, my complexion has developed that pasty-white sheen, and when I go outside I hiss at the sun like the Nosferatu or some other denizen of the night. For the sake of a healthy dating life, I try to stay off.

So I basically take it in small steps, kind of the Atkins Diet of baseball stat nerdery. During my 12-step BTF recovery process, I came across this writeup by Chris Dial, where he presents his choices for who should have won the NL Gold Gloves (because the real GG voting is a joke), using a number of (confusing) defensive metrics.

According to his analysis, Pedro Feliz was 2007's best defensive third baseman, which comes as no surprise. I've harped about that before. No, the real shocker is that he rates Omar Vizquel as the best shortstop. We all know Omar is still pretty good, but it seemed like common wisdom that he was declining rapidly. Not so, says Dial. In fact, check out this quote:

>That (outstanding defense) could have been enough to make Omar an average player in 2007, shocking as that sounds.>

Whoah. Omar must have been one hell of a wizard with the glove to make him average, as his bat reached Neifi depths of putridness. I'm not sure I agree, as this is the only bit of analysis that I've seen that rates Vizquel as the best (whereas just about every defensive metric has Feliz as the top 3B), but if true, it gives his re-signing a more positive outlook.

--There was an article today on the Giants official website about the Giants apparently letting Ray Durham and Kevin Frandsen fight it out for the second base job, but I think Chris Haft is just scratching for things to write about. When is the last time the Giants actually let a young player compete, fair and square, for an everyday job against a veteran? Remember the Jamey Wright vs. Brad Hennessey "contest" that really wasn't a fight at all, because Wright had the job as long as he didn't completely mess himself in the spring. Same with Russ Ortiz this past season. Do you really think the Giants are going to give Frandsen a fair shot at taking the starting job from the savvy veteran making $7 million? Please.

For the record, though, I do want to see Frandsen start at third base (assuming the Giants don't upgrade that position in the interrim), and I expect Durham to be considerably better this year. His track record is is just too good for him to fall apart this much, this fast. Plus, how could he be any worse?

--I discussed the lunacy that can go hand-in-hand with Hall of Fame arguments last week, especially involving Jim Rice, but if you want to take a head-long plunge into the darkest depths of the stark-raving-mad HOF argument, I direct you to this bit of wisdom from everybody's favorite Curly-Haired Boyfriend. FJM tears into poor Dan quite nicely here.

--Ten years after my Freshman English teacher in high school sent the class into a baffled stupor by citing it, I think I finally get this joke. Or do I?

--Ah, TGIF video, how I've missed ye. I'm not sure I can really explain this, but...just check it out.

Labels: awful sportswriting, defense, Hall of Fame, link drop, omar vizquel, Tim Lincecum

Today we continue my mini look back at Goose Gossage's career. Funny, I was born halfway through the Goose's career, and by the time I got to the point in my life where I started watching baseball (or at least remember anything about it), Gossage was but a shadow of his former self, so I'm not sure why I feel qualified to conduct this strange memoir. But I digress...

1981: Unfazed by the previous October's disappointment, Gossage returned to post maybe his most dominant season ever. In a season torn apart by labor strife, Gossage posted an incredible 0.77 ERA (for a 465 ERA+!!!!). He also saved 20 games, yet only finished 5th in the Cy Young voting. Who did win the Cy? Another reliever, Rollie Fingers, who won not only the Cy Young but the league MVP as well.

Bill James somewhat famously pondered in his New Historical Abstract why Rollie Fingers won the MVP award that year over Gossage, who had the more dominant ERA. Fingers posted a 1.04 ERA (332 ERA+) while saving 28 games, and won MVP and CY honors for a Brewers team making the playoffs for the first time ever. Fingers had the higher ERA, and pitched in a friendlier pitcher's park, but he also pitched in 78 innings, compared to Gossage's (relatively meager) 46 2/3. Fingers had 70 Pitching Runs Above Replacement (uh...just read this) that year, while Gossage had 44.

So it seems the voters got it right, as Fingers's huge lead in innings made him more valuable. Still, it's hard to see why Fingers was given the MVP when guys like Eddie Murray and Bobby Grich were tearing the AL apart that year. I guess it wasn't the most absurd MVP vote, though.

For the record, Gossage made eight playoff appearances that year (there were three playoff rounds in the 1981 postseason) and didn't allow a single run. It'd be his last postseason with the Yankees.

1983: It would have been a good yet nondescript year for Gossage and the Yanks, except for that little incident with George Brett and the pine tar bat. It's one of the most notorious (and hilarious) games in major league history. Long story short: Yankee manager Billy Martin was sick of Brett killing his team. Martin knew that Brett was using too much pine tar on his bat (pretty much every player did), so he decided that the next time Brett hurt the Yankees, which inevitably he would, Martin was going to point out Brett's illegal bat to the umps. Yeah, Martin was one conniving son of a bitch.

Sure enough, in a game on July 24, with the Royals down a run, Brett hit a go-ahead, ninth-inning, two-run home run off of Gossage. Out came Martin, pointing at Brett's bat. The umpires inspected it, determined that there was indeed an illegal amount of pine tar on it, ejected Brett, and nullified the home run, giving the Yankees the victory.

Brett's reaction when he realized he had been ejected is one of the all-time great blowups in professional sports history. He stormed out of the dugout like a rabid wolverine, spitting, cussing, and having to be restrained by teammates. I don't think I've seen an angrier human being in my life, and who could blame him, really? I can't find video of this anywhere, so if somebody has a link, please clue me in.

Anyway, the game was played under protest by the Royals, and eventually MLB allowed the home run to stand, and the game was finished that August. Poor Goose was stuck with the loss, although he still enjoyed a fine season, winning 13 games and saving 22 with his usual super ERA.

1984: Gossage packed his bags and left for the warm climate of San Diego, helping a one-hit wonder Padres team win the NL West and the pennant by saving 25 games with 102 stellar relief innings. Gossage made the final postseason appearance of his career in Game 5 of the World Series, and it was pretty ugly.

As the Padres were in the midst of getting trounced by a powerhouse Tiger team, Gossage was brought in to start the seventh inning of the deciding Game 5, with the Pads trailing 4-3. He promptly gave up a home run to Lance Parrish, and it would only go straight downhill from there. "Dirty" Kurt Bevacqua, enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame (check out his line from the Series!), homered for the Padres in the top of the eighth to bring San Diego back to within a run.

Already down one run and facing elimination against Detroit's dominant closer, Willie Hernandez, Gossage came out for the eighth with one order: hold the Tigers without a run. He couldn't do it. The Tigers put runners on second and third with one out, and Kirk Gibson was coming up.

San Diego manager Dick Williams came out to the mound to ask if Gossage wanted to walk Gibson and face Parrish with the bases loaded (Parrish had homered earlier off of Goose, but he was a weaker hitter, and he was also right-handed; Gibson was a lefty swinger). Gossage, whether out of some sense of bravado or overconfidence (he had struck out Gibson an inning earlier), waved his manager back to the dugout and dug in to face Gibby. Gossage's second pitch sailed into Tiger Stadium's upper deck, cementing Detroit's World Championship and leaving Gossage stewing on the mound. Hey, at least he wasn't the one to give up the timeless World Series homer that Gibson would hit four years later.

1989: Does anybody remember Goose's time with the Giants? I sure don't, but then again, I was only six years old. On the surface, Gossage's tenure with the Giants seems pretty good, as he made 31 appearances and saved four games with a 2.68 ERA. Looking closer, though, you can see why the Giants eventually ended up waiving him. In 43 and 2/3 innings, he had a K:BB ratio of 24:27, so while his ERA looks nice, he must have had runners all over the bases. Picture an Armando Benitez kind of walking-on-broken-glass act. Then again, maybe we shouldn't be thinking of Armando Benitez at all.

Gossage finished that season back with the Yankees, and thus wasn't with the Giants for their World Series run. Gossage, incredibly, hung on until 1994, enjoying a few good years, including one with the A's in 1992, when they won their division. His career lasted an impressive 22 seasons and he racked up 310 saves, 17th all-time.

My take on relievers has been well-documented on this blog. I'm a little skeptical about their value, and I think the save is a complete junk stat that should really be ignored. A vast majority of the best relievers were essentially starters who crapped out, guys like Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Lee Smith, and Eric Gagne, so I question how good they really are, as pitchers. Even Dennis Eckersley, the quintessential great starter-turned-reliever, only became a bullpen ace because he completely lost his way as a starting pitcher.

That doesn't take anything away from the Goose's Hall of Fame credentials, though. Relief pitchers were more valuable in his day, because they threw way more innings. The one-inning model of closer didn't come along until about 1988, with Tony LaRussa and Eck. In his prime, Gossage would usually come in around the seventh inning and stay in to close out the game, which essentially made it a six-inning ballgame for the opponent. Looking at those kinds of workloads, it's amazing that his arm held up for so long, and so well.

Lastly, if baseball writers are going to put relief pitchers, and their contributions to the game, on such a high pedestal, then it only makes sense to establish a place in the Hall of Fame for them. And if you're going to put relievers in the Hall of Fame, you've gotta have the Goose, who is probably the best relief pitcher of all time.

Labels: blast from the past, Hall of Fame, the Goose

Congratulations to Goose Gossage, who was elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame last week. I thought it'd be fun to take a brief look at some of the most interesting parts of the career of one of the most colorful and perhaps most important pitchers in baseball history.

Gossage was originally drafted by and came up with the White Sox. For his first three seasons, he dabbled around in mediocrity for some uninspiring ChiSock teams, until...

1975: Gossage's first brilliant relief season. He posted a 1.84 ERA in a whopping 141 innings in relief, which would be unheard of these days. His 26 saves led the league, which would probably also be unheard of in today's game.

1976: Perhaps the Red Sox looked at Gossage's 1976 season when they were deciding whether or not to make Jon Papelbon a starter before the start of last year. Few people remember this, but Chicago manager Paul Richards inexplicably decided to make Gossage a starter, something that didn't go particularly well. Gossage wasn't terrible, but he was obviously more suited to a role in the bullpen, as he made 29 starts (completing 15 of them) and threw 224 innings while putting up a 9-17 record with a 3.94 ERA (91 ERA+) for a horrible team.

In this day and age, it would take some serious cojones to take a guy who had just put up a monstrous season as a closer and put him in the rotation, just due to the media backlash alone. Back then, though, I think teams' utilization of the bullpen ace sort of role was still in its infancy, and I doubt many people cared. Maybe Richards saw a great pitcher and wanted to maximize his innings. In that light, it doesn't seem too crazy, I suppose, but why fix it if it ain't broke? Needless to say, Goose never started another game in his career.

1977: Ah, back to the bully and back to brilliance, as the Goose put up a ridiculous 243 ERA+ and saved 26 games in 133 innings. Unfortunately, it wasn't for the White Sox. Gossage was traded to the Pirates before the season for Richie Zisk, as beloved White Sox owner Bill Veeck was in the midst of acquiring every pending free agent slugger he could find in a last-ditch effort to contend. The Pirates, meanwhile, won 96 games, yet still fell five games short of a great Phillies team.

I'd argue that everything up to this point in Gossage's career is moot, though, because by this time he still hadn't grown that awesome mustache.

1978: Gossage converted to the dark side by signing a free agent deal with the Yankees, and it was in New York where he would cement his legend status. In his first season under Big Stein, Gossage was again practically unhittable, putting up a 2.01 ERA in 134 innings (he also factored into 21 decisions!), while again leading the league in saves. He also pitched six innings in the World Series without giving up a run.

And because it's mandatory for all fearsome closers to have goofy facial hair...yes, there it is.

1980: Another great year, one in which he posted the highest save total of his career (33), but one marred by playoff disaster. Goose had been pretty much the scariest dude on the mound for the past few seasons, but that all changed when he met up with George Brett that October.

You see, from 1976-1978, the Yankees and Royals squared off in three straight ALCS, and the Yankees won all of them, often in heartbreaking fashion. They were taut, hard-fought battles in which players left all their blood and sweat on the field (literally; one year Reggie Jackson hideously spiked Royals shortstop Freddie Patek, but Patek was amazingly able to make it out for the rest of the series, despite nearly having his leg taken off). Always, however, it was the Yankees who came away victorious.

In 1980, though, the Royals found themselves up two games to none on their long-time nemesis (back then the LCS was a 3 of 5 contest), and the Yanks were clawing against the wall. In Game Three, the Yankees clung to a 2-1 lead in the seventh inning. Gossage came on to close out the game, and it started to look bleak for Kansas City. Gossage was essentially unhittable, and many of the Royal players later voiced that had the Yankees won that game, they'd have likely won the series (the last two games were in New York, and these teams were basically the same from those '76-'78 contests, so there was some domage going on here).

Yankee starter Tommy John retired the first two hitter easily, but then he allowed a double to Willie Wilson. That brought in Gossage, who came riding in on one of those goofy little carts they had in the bullpens in those days. Gossage looked as fearsome as ever, stomping off the mound, breathing fire, looking like a crazed biker...doing what he usually did. The first batter he faced, U.L. Washington, singled, putting two runners on base for George Brett.

Brett was himself a Hall of Famer and was coming off arguably the best year of his career, one in which he batted a blistering .390/.454/.664 (and speaking of blisters, it was in this series that Brett would begin suffering from a crippling case of hemorrhoids that nearly took him out of a few World Series games...ouch!) . He had been unstoppable in the teams' previous playoff meetings, and this year it was no different. The only change: he was freaking sick of losing.

Gossage's first pitch was a 100 mph fastball which Brett sent about 120 mph into Yankee Stadium's upper deck, silencing the Bronx crowd and effectively killing the Yankees' season. By this point Gossage had been so dominant and so blown up by the New York media that his mound exploits were approaching deity status. This was the first hint that he might have been human, after all. Just picture him as Xerxes, and Brett as Leonidas.

All right, I didn't start this until the wee hours (damn you, Sarah Connor Chronicles!), and I'm dangerously close to passing out on my keyboard, so we're going to make this a two-parter. Join me tomorrow as I look at the Goose's final Yankee years and his descent into journeyman status, which included a stint with the Giants.

Labels: blast from the past, Hall of Fame, the Goose

There's nothing like taking time out of my day to skewer a bunch of writers who get paid to responsibly analyze the best players in the history of baseball and determine, using facts and good reasoning, whether or not they deserve enshrinement into Cooperstown, and then fail miserably at it. Case in point, the ESPN contributers who have Hall of Fame votes. Here is the list of who each ESPN guru voted for, and it looks like crap.

Everybody voted in Goose Gossage, which I guess makes sense, because if you have Bruce Sutter and Rollie Fingers in the Hall, you have to have the Goose, who mops the floor with both of them. Andre Dawson and Jim Rice are the only other two who would theoretically be elected by this group (you need 75% of the vote to make it). Dawson's .323 career OBP is pretty bad, but he was a very good player for a long time, and I guess he wouldn't be the worst pick for Cooperstown.

The real idiocy starts, though, when these writers start voting for Jim Rice instead of Tim Raines, and Jack Morris instead of Bert Blyleven. Seven voters voted for Rice over Raines. I detailed yesterday how I don't really see how Rice has the credentials, but if you want to vote for him, fine. However, I just don't see how anybody with a brain can vote for Rice and not Raines, who was a better player over a longer period of time, had a career OBP more than 30 points higher, and has the highest stolen base percentage of any player in history with as many attempts. Raines had five seasons where he was arguably the best player in the National League. Rice had one season where he was the best in the AL, and even that's up for debate.

They're different types of players, obviously, but Raines created more runs per game than Rice (6.6 to 6.0) and when you add the defensive value and the fact that Raines wasn't helped susbstantially by his home ballpark, like Rice was, it seems like it should be a no-brainer. I think the fact that Raines had his best years toiling in Canada and that he was overshadowed by Ricky Henderson is going to kill his Hall chances.

As for Blyleven v. Morris, only Buster Olney voted for Jack and not Bert, which I guess makes it less of an outrage. Still, I can't see how the two are even comparable. Blyleven's win-loss percentage suffers because he played for a lot of bad teams, but his ERA+ (118) is better than Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan (111), Don Sutton (108), Phil Neikro (115), Steve Carlton (115), and it absolutely kicks Morris's (105) butt all over the place. What's the difference between Blyleven and those four I mentioned there? He didn't reach the magical 300 win mark, except that he would have if he hadn't spent most of his career pitching for awful teams.

I think what really hurts Blyleven is that he didn't have any kind of famous feat or some kind of feature that would make him especially memorable for HOF voters. Nolan Ryan, of course, had the strikeouts and the no-hitters. Sutton was on good teams all of his career and thus was always on TV in October. Carlton was also on good teams for most of his career, and he also had one of the greatest pitching seasons of all time, in 1972, when he won 27 games for a Phillies team that won 59. Neikro had that lovable knuckleball. Morris was also on good teams basically forever and his ten-inning shutout in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series was one of the greatest single-game pitching performances ever, so a lot of voters think he's qualified simply from memory of that one game (conveniently forgetting that he got shat on in two starts in the very next World Series by those very same Braves).

Blyleven, however, didn't really have any kind of feat or gimmick that really stuck out, and thus I think he was kind of overlooked. He was just consistently great for his entire career, but his greatness came in the shadows. It didn't help that he was rarely in the playoffs (he did pitch in two World Series, in 1979 and 1987), and that his crappy teams always dragged down his win totals, thus killing his Cy Young chances. When Carlton was racking up Cys for the Phillies and facing Tommy Lasorda's Dodgers every postseason, Blyleven was quietly dominating hitters in the then-baseball hell that was Cleveland.

The support for Blyleven these days is so strong that I think it's inevitable that he'll get voted in in the next few years. The sad thing is, I think Morris will get voted in as well, maybe before Bert, and that's a crying shame.

--Side note: How the hell did Pedro Gomez get a Hall vote? Isn't this the guy who was basically assigned by ESPN to sift through Barry Bonds's leavings for like three years? The fact that this guy has a vote (he voted for Lee Smith over Raines and Blyleven, for fuck's sake!), and the fact that the BBWAA felt it necessary to deny Rob Neyer (only one of the best in the biz) and Keith Law (not too far behind, but he's kind of a jerk) HOF votes just indicates how seriously you should really be taking the Hall of Fame these days.

Labels: Hall of Fame

Going on mainstream sports web sites like ESPN.com and reading the ongoing Hall of Fame debates is quickly becoming a sick pleasure of mine. Every time I start to read the comments on the latest hackneyed ESPN "debate", I get Good Paulie and Bad Paulie whispering into each ear. Good Paulie tells me that if I continue to read the increasingly bizarre arguments for Jim Rice's Hall of Fame candidacy from frothy-mouthed computer geeks around the country, it will only result in a substantial decrease in brain matter and dates. On the other hand, Bad Paulie just tells me how frickin' entertaining it is to see these people get so worked up over this crap, and I can't argue with him. So thus I camp out on the computer and read on with a guilty conscience.

It absolutely amazes me how venomous these HOF debates can get. The problem is, many fans have pet players or players who were on their favorite team growing up, and they'll concoct as many convoluted arguments as they can to try to validate their player's HOF credentials. If you dare, dare, try to present evidence that proves they don't belong, God help you.

We're all guilty of it, to some extent. Once upon a time, being a huge Giants fan, I was ready to make a huge Hall of Fame case for Matt Williams. Obviously Williams, as much as we all love the guy, is no HOFer. I also think that Ted Simmons* should be in. Actually, I'll go one further. I think it's an effing travesty that Simmons isn't in, and even worse that he barely got a sniff from the voters. I can make a pretty good case for him (and this being Hall of Fame week, essentially, I just might do that later), and I'm just a nerd with Baseball Reference and the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract to go on.

Fortunately for my sanity and my social life, I don't really care enough to get worked up over it. If Simmons never gets elected, I'll survive and go about my life as a disgruntled Giants fan. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for a lot of these chat forum posters. You'd think some people would have better things to do than try all day to convince Internet denizens who have no HOF vote that their man is Cooperstown material, but you'd be wrong. It can get very emotional, and sometimes I wonder, if you actually do win an argument on a chat board, and the other guy says, like, "whoah, dude, you convinced me, Buddy Biancalana should totally be elected", what do you win? Some sense of self-satisfaction? I guess I'll never know.

The whole thing has a sort of Fox News Channel effect. It's loud, obnoxious, mostly counterfactual, and about 95% of the arguments made are completely asinine, but dammit, I just can't turn away, no matter how pissed off I get. I guess it's just fun to get really mad disagreeing with blowhards who have no clue what they're talking about, whether that be Sean Hannity or "ArodgotpwnedbyurMom6969" on the ESPN forums.

The player drawing the most heated discussion this go-round is probably Jim Rice, the Boston left fielder who played from 1975 to 1989. If you have about two hours to kill, go here, read Rob Neyer's argument for why Rice is not a HOFer, then read the comments section, which is rife with Bostonians and Rice sycophants skewering Neyer as if he spit on the Bible. It should give you some impression of the kind of hurt feelings these debates bring out.

For the record, I think Neyer and the other anti-Rice people (for lack of a better term) make a good case. He was a good hitter and an underrated fielder, but he was one-dimensional, he was helped a lot by Fenway Park, and really only had like three stellar years. Plus, his teammate for many years, Dwight Evans, was just as good of a hitter, for a longer timespan, and was a terrific fielder (remember the Game 6 catch?), and yet he gets zero HOF support. Does this make any sense to anyone?

Most of Rice's proponents will say he was "the most feared hitter of his era", which is not only hogwash (Mike Schmidt or Reggie Jackson, anyone?) but a completely ridiculous point to make in an intelligent debate. You can't really prove or refute it, it's just something you pull out of your ass when all the numbers prove that you just might be totally wrong. And, as Neyer showed, Rice was never, ever near the top of the pack in intentional walks, which would kind of seem to indicate that he probably wasn't really that feared after all.

Another claim trotted out by Rice's supporters is that he led the AL in home runs or total bases or whatever in (insert completely arbitrary span of years). This might be true (I think Rice did lead the majors in total bases from 1975-1986), but you can cherry pick stats like that to prove that anybody is great.

When Neyer or any of the other stat nerds refute this point, the pro-Rice side see their argument essentially boil down to "well, if you don't think Rice is a Hall of Famer, you don't know baseball! Get your head out of the trig book and get your ass in the stands!" That's a generalization, but a fair one given the goofiness of a lot of the comments on that Neyer writeup.

One more thing about Rice, too. Is it just me, or does he seem to be getting a lot of love from sportswriters when he was roundly regarded as a complete prick in his playing days? Maybe Barry Bonds shouldn't be so worried after all.

Anyway, since we find out who gets the Cooperstown call on Thursday, and since January is the most boring baseball month, we'll talk Hall of Fame in the coming days, including who'd be on my ballot (given my stathead inclinations, it shouldn't be much of a shock).


*Why do I care one bit about Simmons, a player who had essentially all of his peak years in the decade before I was born? Two words: Harvey's Wallbangers.

Labels: Hall of Fame, Ted Simmons for Cooperstown