Monthly Archives: December 2025

Our 2025 Dodger Sym-Phony Awards for Extinguished Foolishness

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Dodgers Sym-Phony Band

Cacophony in Blue: the Dodgers Sym-Phony Band, plus a pair of unidentified Dodgers, one of whom seems determined to show he has only a slightly lesser sense of time and beat.

When Mr. Cartwright first laid forth the basic dimensions of a baseball field, he had no idea that the game to which he lent his landscape eye would be capable of pastoral play, bursts of excitement, spells of intellect, and . . . enough tomfoolery, foolhardiness, and fool’s gold to inspire poets, pundits, and professional mischief makers alike. The poor man.

Said tomfoolery, foolhardiness, and fool’s gold are not restricted to the field, of course. Baseball’s fans have been (mostly) an agreeable gathering of the aforementioned poets, pundits, and professional mischief makers (not to mention amatuers), patrician and plebeian alike. Baseball’s players have not been immune to mischief making, either.

In regards to which, I hereby open the envelopes and reveal the 2025 winners of the Dodgers Sym-Phony Awards. Named for that crew of Ebbets Field fans who couldn’t carry tunes in backpacks or briefcases alike, but whose clattering, splattering cacophony charmed the living brains out of those who once packed the Brooklyn bandbox on behalf of slapstick one generation and social groundbreaking pennant contention the next.

Animal House

Donald Trump played Douglas (We now consecrate the bond of obedience) Neidermeyer to Rob Manfred’s Chip Diller when it came to the late Pete Rose . . .

The Animal House Thank You, Sir, and May I Have Another Iron Paddle—To Commissioner Rob Manfred. When a certain president threatened to pardon the late Pete Rose and demanded Rose’s immediate Hall of Fame enshrinement, Manfred met said president in due course. After which, he reached into his heart of hearts, prayed hard, and decided . . . that “permanent” meant mere “lifetime,” after all.

Never mind Rose’s too-well-known violations of Rule 21(d). Never mind his decades of lying about it until or unless it was time to sell yet another autobiography. Never mind the aforesaid president’s erroneous insistence that Rose only bet on his own team to win. (The days Rose didn’t bet were construable by the gambling underground as hints not to bet the Reds those days.)

Once upon a time, such behaviour was believed to be beyond a president and beneath a commissioner. Even if by belief alone. Mr. Trump is not the first and probably won’t be the last president to stand athwart common sense and the law, yelling, “Just try to stop me!” But Mr. Manfred was under no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to satisfy Mr. Trump’s witless hankering, either.

The PT 73, whose crew sometimes managed to make real patrols when not making real mischief.

The Quinton McHale PT-73 Crest—To everyone who thought (erroneously) that the too-much publicised torpedo bats of the early 2025 season were, with apologies to George Carlin, going to curve your spine, grow hair on your hands, and keep the country from . . . who the hell knew exactly what?

It didn’t help that the Yankees spent an early season weekend demolishing the Brewers with a few of their batters using the torps.

“Torpedo bats were the talk of MLB in April and May in 2025 and then were never heard from again,” wrote my IBWAA Here’s the Pitch colleague and Almost Cooperstown writer Mark Kolier. “The opening Yankee series versus the Brewers was an anomaly. And players who had great early season success while using a torpedo bat were unable to sustain that success . . . The torpedo bat panacea was fun to talk about while it lasted. But now that’s over.”

We think.

The Maier’s Trophy for Interference Above, Beyond, and Beneath—To Austin Capobianco and John P. Hansen, Yankee fans with onion juice for brains. Banned from all major league ballparks and other facilities indefinitely in January. The crime: Grabbing the wrist of Dodger right fielder Mookie Betts and trying to pry a long foul out of Betts’s glove. Game Four, 2024 World Series.

Dishonourable mention: Barstool Sports writer Tommy Smokes, writing: “The Yankees were down 3-0 in the World Series and you do whatever it takes to extend the at-bat for your guy at the plate.” Today, wrist-grabbing and attempted ball snatching. Tomorrow, shooting when you see the whites of their balls?

The Rose “Make Your Bet and Lie In It” Golden Thorn—To Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, Guardians pitchers, accused of a pitch-rigging scheme involving throwing particular pitches for particular counts to enable betting on those pitches (it’s called proposition betting) and financial rewards for the bettors.

Reputedly, gamblers won almost half a million on what the pair threw. Clase and Ortiz are charged, too, with earning kickbacks for their, ahem, pitching in.

The Chicken Little Flying Fickle Finger of Fake—To everyone who bleated the sky is falling, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and we don’t feel fine, when Robby the Umpbot made his major league debut last spring training. Robby answered the call of duty when Cubs pitcher Cody Poteet called for his help with one on and Max Muncy (Dodgers) at the plate.

Robby ruled an 0-1 fastball at the knees, called ball one by plate umpire Tony Randazzo, was in fact strike two. Nobody threw lightning bolts down from the Elysian Fields.

The Clarence Bethen-Wile E. Coyote Brass Stethoscope for Injuries Straight Outta Looney Tunes—Named in honour of 1) the pitcher who forgot his false teeth were in his back pocket and slid into second base with a bite on his butt; and, 2) the clod of a canine (Famishius slobbius) who kept Acme in business for eons buying their constantly-backfiring weapons and traps:

* Mookie Betts (Dodgers)—A nocturnal stroll to the reading room turned into a toe fracture. The Mookie Monster missed four games as a result. He opined that he thought we’ve all suffered toe fractures from nocturnal bathroom breaks. I’d like to see the roll call first. And, whom among them might have sung “Midnight Stroll.”

* Zack Littell (Rays)—He learned (or re-learned) the hard way how not to use your head while parenting. Chasing his son around an inflatable slide park, he plowed into scaffolding not padded for play. Let’s guess his favourite song wouldn’t be “Ring My Bell” for a long enough while.

* Jose Miranda (Twins)—Sent back to AAA after a viral baserunning mishap, he went to Target first. (Bad name, in this instance.) He needed bottled water. He reached high for a case of it. He couldn’t stop it from tumbling down. Four weeks on the injured list with a strained left hand, then cut loose entirely when he returned without hitting much else. I submit that nobody had the nerve to play him “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

* Mariano Rivera (Old-Timers)—The Hall of Fame Yankee relief legend suffered a torn Achilles tendon . . . while pitching in a Yankees Old-Timer’s Day game. You guessed it: I don’t think his favourite song last year was “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.”

* Ryan Weathers (Marlins)—His pre-game stroll around the mound brought foul weather. He’d thrown his final warmup toss, then turned right to take the stroll. His catcher Nick Fortes threw up the middle to start the round-the-horn routine. The ball didn’t make it. It hit Weathers flush on the left side of the head.

Then, when he shook it off and pitched three innings, Weathers strained his lat and missed three months. I’m going to guess the poor guy’s favourite song is not “Stormy Weather.”

Wishing them and all no further embarrassing wounds, pinpricks, or fractures. And, wishing you from there (and here) a happy New Year, a damn-sight-better-than-the-old-one New Year, and a 2026 baseball season to come in which there’s no foolishness like (mostly) harmless foolishness.

The BBWAA Hall ballot: The newcomers

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Ryan Braun

If you’ll pardon the expression, Braun cheated himself out of a Hall of Fame case.

A few weeks ago, I had a look at the holdovers on the current Baseball Writers Association of America Hall of Fame ballot. Included in my analysis of their cases was a promise, which some might deem a threat, to look at the newcomers in short order.

Well, the order was short enough. In the interim, the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee elected Jeff Kent to the Hall. So It’s time. But I’m going to tell you going in that I have a sneaking suspicion that Kent may stand alone among players at the Cooperstown podium next summer.

Which would probably drive to the nearest drink well those writers still standing who saw Kent in his prime. The ones who remember his feuding with a certain Giants teammate. The ones who knew concurrently that, without that teammate in the lineup ahead of him, Kent’s only passage to the Hall of Fame might be as a paying customer.

I’m not going to say, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” But, and we’ll take these ballot rookies alphabetically . . .

Ryan Braun—Like Álex Rodríguez, Braun got himself caught as a customer of actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances from Biogenesis. Unlike A-Rod, that didn’t provoke Braun to litigiousness. His litigiousness happened earlier, when he tried suing his way out of a suspension when testing caught him using synthetic testosterone. He even accused a sample collector of anti-Semitism.

After serving his Biogenesis suspension, Braun went out of his way to self-rehabilitate. He apologised publicly to the collector he smeared; he revived his charitable activities. But he was also never again the player he was before his PED issues, thanks largely to injuries.

In peak and career value terms, his performance papers fall too far short of Hall-worthiness. In trying to go scorched-earth when caught red-handed (and probably red-faced), placing his entire pre-test/pre-suspension career into question (fairly or unfairly), Braun cheated himself out of a Hall case. No.

Shin-soo Choo—The second Korean position player to make it to the U.S. major leagues (Hee Seop Choi preceded him), Choo was as talented as the day was long and just about as unfortunate. Injury bugs got to him too often. At his best and healthiest, he was as solid a tablesetter as a lineup could have. But it’s not enough to strike a plaque in Cooperstown. No.

Edwin Encarnación—As a Blue Jay in the middle of his fifteen-year career, he was one of the American League’s most feared sluggers. He was also a better baserunner than you might remember. His defensive liabilities probably did the most to keep his peak and career values below the Hall of Fame averages.

But he and Toronto will always have that monstrous three-run homer to send the Jays to an American League division series after Buck Showalter’s brain fart meant Encarnación wouldn’t have to get through the 2016 AL’s best reliever, Zach Britton. No.

Gio Gonzalez—Likeable. Durable. Dependable. And, according to Baseball Reference, the number 309 starting pitcher of all time. One fielding-independent championship isn’t enough to get you to the Hall after a thirteen-year career. Twice leading your league in walks won’t, either. But you kind of had to love this guy.

In the pre-universal DH era, Gonzalez had an all-time freak stat: he struck out more pitchers batting against him than any other pitcher in four decades preceding him. Not a Hall stat, but certainly something to warm the hearts of those who know baseball really is a funny game. No.

Alex Gordon—It would be easy to dismiss him because of his modest batting statistics, but Gordon was one whale of a defensive left fielder. He has eight Gold Gloves and two Platinums, and he didn’t get them as participation trophies, either. He is, in fact, the number three left fielder ever for run prevention.

The only guys ahead of him there? Some dude named Bonds, and some Hall of Famer named Yastrzemski. That’s bloody well elite company he’s keeping there.

I don’t know if that alone will get Gordon into the Hall in due course. But I say “in due course” because I think his case deserves deeper looks and I suspect he’ll last on the ballot for another couple of years at least. Not now.

Cole Hamels—He looked like a Hall of Famer once upon a time. Especially when he helped lead the 2008 Phillies to a World Series triumph with a 1.80 postseason ERA that year, not to mention bagging the Most Valuable Player awards in the National League Championship Series and the World Series.

Talent to burn and perfectionism likewise, seemed to be the cumulative assessment, whether in Philadelphia, Texas, or Chicago. He also dealt with enough injury issues to make it difficult to impossible to build the Hall of Fame case he looked to be beginning in the glory days with the Phillies. But I suspect he might linger on the ballot another year, at least. No.

Matt Kemp—He, too, looked like a Hall of Fame talent when he arrived. The bad news was a) Kemp’s dynamic style was offset by his frequent inabilities to re-adjust when pitchers caught onto his fastball dependency at the plate; and, b) he was a defensive liability as often as not.

He hit with staggering power when he was right, especially his career year 2011. But when measured against the rest of his career overall, that turned out to be kind of a fluke season. Kemp’s real problem might have been being a designated hitter type who played in the wrong league in the pre-universal DH era. No.

Howie Kendrick

Gallows pole: Kendrick’s power hitting helped the 2019 Nationals go all the way to the Promised Land.

Howie Kendrick—Eminently likeable, especially as his career neared its finish and he shone for the 2019 Nationals all the way through the postseason. Especially hitting a pair of ultimately game-winning home runs that paid the bill for every steak he might ever want to have in Washington for the rest of his life. (He also won that year’s NLCS MVP.)

Forgotten amidst those postseason heroics: Kendrick was a very solid second baseman, not quite an intergalactic presense there but in the plus column for run prevention. It won’t be enough to help him into Cooperstown, but when he was right he was a fine player and a terrific clubhouse element. No.

Nick Markakis—He’s one classic example of a terrific baseball player who was as solid as they came without being spectacular. (2,388 hits; 57 total zone runs as a right fielder.) Even as something of an on-base machine and a definite asset in right field, Markakis was the guy you couldn’t bear to replace, even if the rest of the world didn’t necessarily drop what it was doing when he checked in at the plate or ran down a right field fly. Not quite.

Daniel Murphy—A threshing machine at the plate for the pre-World Series 2015 postseason Mets, with those six consecutive games hitting a home run and breaking Hall of Famer Mike Piazza’s team record for total homers in a single postseason. Unfortunately, his Series fielding mishaps negated that hitting prowess on the way to the Mets’ Series loss to the Royals.

Murphy’s 2016 redemption (leading the NL in slugging and OPS) proved a one-off. His career overall was too far short of the Hall of Fame, but that pre-World Series postseason power display in 2015 keeps him a Met hero. No.

Hunter Pence—He got to play for two out of the three San Francisco Series winners in the 2010s. He was charmingly quirky, enough to earn a temporary trend of “ahhh, ya mother rides a vacuum cleaner” banners around the league. (Hunter Pence eats pizza with a fork! Hunter Pence says “Sorry” when he catches a fly! were typical.)

Well, Pence was a good, solid player when he wasn’t injured. That’s important and it counts, and if it’s married to a guy who’s delightfully flaky that’s a big plus. That might even keep him on an extra Hall ballot. Might. Not quite.

Rick Porcello—His 2016 American League Cy Young Award was an outlying season for him—especially since future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander should have won it. Porcello  opened the next season with a 1.40 ERA and 1.74 FIP in his first four games. That season ended with him showing a 4.65 ERA/4.60 FIP.

That was Porcello. Periodic short bursts of greatness, modest longer terms. He was smart on the mound and relied on his defenses. But that’s not always going to make a Hall of Famer, either. No.

First published at Sports Central.

The Polar Bear of Baltimore

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Pete Alonso

The Polar Bear gets his wings in Baltimore.

Those running baseball front offices will never lack for pressure. But there are always those among them who inflict the pressure upon themselves. Sometimes the intentions are noble. Sometimes the foresight is far. Sometimes the vision is blurry. Sometimes the blur becomes blindness.

Today’s Oriole fans have the unexpected luxury of believing their team’s president Mike Elias means business, when he says he was looking to take the Orioles’s promising lineup over the top and signing Pete Alonso was the means to that end.

Today’s Met fans have what they think is the too-familiar lack of luxury in believing their team’s president David Stearns is either talking through his head gear or blowing smoke, when he says the Mets were wary of going as far ahead in time with Alonso as the Orioles ultimately did.

Those Met fans, who’ve made a dark art out of pronouncing a season lost after a single bad inning on Opening Day, can’t fathom how a first baseman who’s still a young enough man, and has been one of their team’s most consistent power hitters since his 2019 arrival, became un-affordable beyond three years and unworthy of even receiving an offer this time around.

Stearns hasn’t kept his wish to upgrade the Mets defensively a state secret. The unfortunate flip side of Alonso’s batting prowess has been his fielding lack of it. As good as he is on the double play, as excellent as he is at snatching throws in the dirt, Alonso has slightly negative run prevention plus below-league average range factors.

The Orioles seem to be counting on Alonso’s formidable bat making up for the fielding shortfalls. The Mets seemed unwilling to continue taking that chance no matter how many home runs, no matter how many extra base hits, no matter that Alonso nudged Darryl Strawberry to one side as the franchise’s all-time home run hitter.

Alonso wasn’t the first free agent Stearns allowed to change addresses. The day before the Orioles landed him, relief ace Edwin Diaz elected to sign with the Dodgers. Three years and $96 million—and the largest average annual value for a reliever yet—wasn’t a figure the Mets couldn’t equal if they were thinking in three-year increments as seemed to be the case with Alonso.

So what made the bullpen bellwether return west? Part of it might have been Stearns signing bounceback relief candidate Devin Williams, with whom he was familiar from their time in Milwaukee. Part of it, too, and perhaps especially, might have been their coaching overhaul following the season included Jeremy Hefner, a pitching coach Diaz liked and respected.

The 2025 Mets had pitching issues that had nothing much to do with Hefner. But Diaz took his dismissal to mean the Mets suddenly got unserious about something dear to his heart.

“I spent seven years in New York,” the righthander said after he signed with the Dodgers. “They treated me really good. They treated me great. I chose the Dodgers because they are a winning organization. I’m looking to win, and I think they have everything to win. Picking the Dodgers was pretty easy.” Owitch.

And Alonso? He was both a fan favourite and an undisputed team leader, on the field and off it, known as much for his charitable acts as his bat and his fun-loving leadership style. But he spurned a significant extension offer a few years ago, and he re-upped with the Mets last winter in the face of a thinner market, taking two years with an opt-out after 2025. He exercised it after a big bounceback season and found a more accommodating new market.

Never underrate the power of betting on yourself and winning big even if it’s moving from the Grand Central Parkway to Cal Ripken Way.

“I’ve really enjoyed playing in New York,” said the Polar Bear, whose Oriole introduction included a large stuffed white polar bear on the table to his right and a brief struggle to button up his new Orioles jersey properly. He took number 25 only because his long-familiar number 20 has been long, long retired by the Orioles in honour of Hall of Famer Frank Robinson.

“I’m very gracious for that opportunity,” continued Alonso, who may have landed himself the Yogi Berra Malapropriety Award with that phrasing. “There’s some amazing people over there. Whether it be the locker room staff, clubbies, it was phenomenal. I really enjoyed my time. But this right here, this organization, this city, I’m so proud to call it home.” Double owitch.

“Losing franchise stalwarts Díaz and Alonso on back-to-back days is something a Mets fan might have expected from the Wilpon ownership—only with some ridiculous positive spin on how the team will be better for it,” said The Athletic‘s Ken Rosenthal.

Now, fans might wonder if Fred and Jeff Wilpon are practicing voodoo on David Stearns and owner Steve Cohen.

Stearns and Cohen have not said much of anything. That’s to be expected as they start to clean up the mess they’ve created, the baseball equivalent of a flooded kitchen floor. But they had better provide some answers quickly, and with actions, not words.

Maybe reuniting with Stearns gives Williams a clean shot at a big bounceback following a testy 2025 in Yankee pinstripes. Maybe bringing aging, injury-recovering Marcus Semien aboard—at the cost of another fan favourite, Brandon Nimmo, going to the Rangers—helps the Mets begin the defensive remaking Stearns has sung as a mantra. Maybe adding Jorge Polanco on a two-year deal helps likewise, especially since Polanco can play first as well as second with some pop at the plate. (He hit 26 homers last year.)

Alonso solves a huge portion of half the Orioles’s issues. They need pitching upgrades and  the best Alonso can do about that is help give that staff runs to work with. But they’re getting a class act who seems unable to wait to have a clubhouse impact as well as a scoreboard one.

“How I’m going to help is share my experience, and pretty much share whatever has helped me kind of step and rise to the occasion,” said Alonso, who has a sterling postseason resumé including an intergalactic moment or two. “I want to be an open book, pretty much to everyone in the clubhouse. For me, I take pride in that. Not only do I love performing, but ultimately I love forging great relationships and being a great teammate.”

That sounds like just the kind of guy the Mets should have wanted to keep.

Published originally at Sports Central.

Kent stands alone, for now

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Jeff Kent

Jeff Kent, now a Hall of Fame second baseman, during the height of his career, as a Giant.

In 1999, during which he earned his first All-Star selection, Jeff Kent told Sports Illustrated  writer Franz Lidz that, growing up, “I never watched baseball on TV. It’s slow and boring. I’m not a fan. Never was.” Well.

He played the game as a boy growing up in southern California, but it seems to have been a joyless activity. That, in turn, seems to have been the product of parenting in which his father, a motorcycle policeman of stern perfectionism, who took his children to Dodgers games, grounded his son similarly.

“I’d go 3-for-4,” he told Lidz, “and he’d chastise me for the out. I’d throw a one-hitter, and he’d tell me I could have gotten the hitter on a curve.” Reading that, you suspect that, if the boy Kent had broken his league’s home run record, the father would have harped and carped on the ones he missed. If he’d pitched a perfect game, perhaps Pop would have snarked about the ones the boy didn’t get over the plate.

Will Kent take his election to the Hall of Fame by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee as a vindicating rebuke to such dubious parenting? Hard to say unless you can read his mind. More than one profile has revealed Kent as a high school player with both an “attitude problem” and a discomfort being sandwiched between a coach not unlike his father and teammates who itched for him to stand up for them.

Marry his father’s negativism to his apparently unpleasurable high school playing experience, and perhaps you get a better sense of how Kent came by a personality that either unnerved or annoyed teammates and reporters. It might have pained him to consider, but Kent had experienced joyless parental judgmentalism comparable to his eventual teammate/rival Barry Bonds. Bonds grew up having similar skirmishes with his own haunted, major league playing father. It only began with coming home from school with B’s on his report cards and hearing Pop’s retort, “B’s ain’t A’s, boy.”

Maybe that’s why Kent would earn a too-quick reputation as a malcontent after he was dealt as a rookie to the Mets (for star pitcher David Cone) in August 1992. His new teammates treated him to a rookie-hazing prank; he reacted with fury. From the Mets to the Indians to the Giants, Kent seemed to have a reputation as a solid enough player and something of a head case.

As a Giant, he launched a six-season run in which he’d hit at least 20 home runs and drive at least 100 runs home. He owed it to two things: 1) He picked up on lifting his hands a little more at the plate from Hall of Fame designated hitter Edgar Martinez; and, 2) he had Bonds’s protection in the lineup batting ahead of him. Come 2002, come highs and lows.

The lows began in spring training, when he tried claiming that he’d injured himself washing his truck but it turned out he’d done it popping motorcycle wheelies. They continued when a scuffle with Bonds prompted him to tell manager Dusty Baker he wanted off the Giants. The highs included a career-high 37 home runs, and a two-bomb World Series Game Five against the ultimately triumphant Angels. He also took a stand against actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances, admirably.

He went from there to have good seasons with the Astros. (And shine in Game Five of the 2004 National League Championship Series, a three-run bomb off Cardinals closer Jason Isringhausen.) From there, a two-year deal with his hometown Dodgers that turned into an extension. He’d have his moments again, but the injuries began taking a toll. He found himself questioning how professional some of his younger teammates truly were; his final postseason saw him limited to the bench after mid-season knee surgery.

When he elected to retire rather than try one more season in 2008, Kent let his vulnerability show. He also showed himself, as I’ve written before, a man who learned to say hello when it was time to say goodbye. “I’ve learned to love and appreciate the fans,” he said in an emotional announcement, “and I’ve learned to love and appreciate the Jeff Kent haters out there, too.”

I’m thankful for those people even more than the fans who gave me a hug every day, because those people motivate you . . . I leave this game proud that I have treated it with the utmost respect . . . I have tried to carry on a legacy of winning wherever I have gone. Any integrity that I have had in this game is something that I’m very, very proud of. I believe I played this game right, and I believe I’m leaving this game right.

His Hall of Fame case seemed almost entirely in his bat and his counting statistics: the most home runs by any expansion-era second baseman, among other things. (His black ink is limited to leading his league twice in sacrifice flies.) But would you believe that, by my Real Batting Average metric (total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by plate appearances), Kent is the best batter among the post-World War II/post-integration/night-ball era second basemen?

That’s batter, not hitter.

Mazeroski’s is the lowest RBA among such second basemen, but he’s in the Hall of Fame because he’s still the single most run-preventive second baseman who ever played the major league game. Kent’s defensive statistics aren’t even in the same quadrant: he was 52 defensive runs below his league average. It cost him plentiful wins above a replacement-level player (WAR) and moved him outside the top twenty second basemen of all as Baseball Reference sees him.

Kent dropped off the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot after ten years in which he’d climbed steadily to 46.5 percent of the vote. The Contemporary Era Committee elected him to Cooperstown with fourteen out of sixteen possible votes, the only committee candidate to make it.

“The time had gone by, and you just leave it alone, and I left it alone,” Kent told a conference call after the committee result came. “I loved the game, and everything I gave to the game I left there on the field. This moment today, over the last few days, I was absolutely unprepared. Emotionally unstable.”

The guy who once admitted motivation from his critics while trying to exist in his own isolated baseball world now admitted that achieving the game’s highest honour caught him off guard and vulnerable. It’s enough to make you wish that Kent could have allowed this side of himself more room to breathe at the plate, at second base, in the clubhouse.

Of the rest of the Contemporary Era Committee candidates, Bonds plus Roger Clemens, Gary Sheffield, and Fernando Valenzuela, made fewer than five ballots. Meaning the Hall of Fame’s new protocol makes them ineligible to return the next time the Contemporary Era Committee considers post-1980 players. They can return to that committee’s ballot after that, but another five-or-less-votes shortfall removes them from Hall consideration permanently.

But it also means Carlos Delgado, Don Mattingly, and Dale Murphy can return on the next Contemporary Era Committee ballot, in 2028.

Kent wouldn’t commit to whether Bonds deserved a berth in Cooperstown, a stance he’s maintained from the moment each first became Hall eligible. “Barry was a good teammate of mine. He was a guy that I motivated and pushed,” Kent told the call.

We knocked heads a little bit. He was a guy that motivated me at times, in frustration, in love, at times both. Barry was one of the best players I ever saw play the game, amazing. For me, I’ve always said that. I’ve always avoided the specific answer you’re looking for, because I don’t have one. I don’t. I’m not a voter.

Time mellows even the harshest of rivals often enough.

A-Rod’s right about Coupmissioner Selig in Cooperstown

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Bud Selig

Maybe one of Selig’s few truly good deeds was the Show-wide retirement of number 42.

I hate to admit it, but Álex Rodríguez is right. There is a mountain of hypocrisy in former commissioner Bud Selig’s membership in the Hall of Fame. Especially when you marry it to A-Rod’s, Barry Bonds’s, Roger Clemens’s, and Mark McGwire’s lack of Hall memberships.

If the Baseball Writers Association of America is keeping Rodríguez, Bonds, Clemens, and McGwire (among others) out of Cooperstown for their actual or alleged use of actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances, there should have been no reason why that Today’s Game Committee elected their prime enabler.

Have you ever read Coupmissioner Selig’s Hall of Fame plaque? It’s a minor masterpiece of a mealymouthful. What was then the Today’s Game Committee that elected the Brewers owner-turned-coupmissioner should have been ashamed.

It only begins with omitting that his coupmmissionership began with the “acting” tag after he and enough of his fellow owners of the time strong-armed Commissioner Fay Vincent into resigning before they could fire him.

From 1990 through 1992, you had to be deaf, dumb, blind, and limbness not to know that Vincent’s execution papers began with his futile but full-bodied efforts at making owners and players partners instead of combatants. The Lords of Baseball were anything but thrilled at being seen as a little bit lower than lords.

The bad news was limited. Unfortunately for Vincent, the owners weren’t amused when a) he refused to surrender his authority when it came to labor matters; and, b) he actually played fair (the horror) about expansion spoils and division/league realignment. Then drug-addicted, self-destructive relief pitcher Steve Howe—whom Vincent magnanimously allowed an umpteenth chance—followed a magnificent comeback with the Yankees by stepping in it yet again.

After which Vincent himself stepped in it. Howe’s relapse prompted three Yankee personnel including manager Buck Showalter into facing an official hearing and character witnessing for the drug-battling righthander. Vincent tried strong-arming the Yankee trio into changing that character witnessing. It took press outrage to get Vincent to back off, but it gave those Lords so predisposed room to denounce as dictatorial a man who normally preferred discussion, debate, and reason.

“Formally named [commissioner] by unanimous vote of all 30 owners in 1998,” Coupmissioner Selig’s plaque continues. That’s like handing Kim Jong-un a loving cup for stable, unanimously-acclaimed leadership but forgetting to mention the thousands of bodies whose owners’s extermination made it so.

“Presided over an era of vast change to the game on the field while extending its breadth and depth off it.” So the dilution of championship, the advent of the wild card era with three-division leagues, the birth of regular-season interleague play were just think-nothing-of-it participation trophymongering hardly worth losing your sleep over, eh?

“Fostered an unprecedented stretch of labour peace . . . ” The achievement of which took the season-killing, World Series-ditching, near-ruinous 1994 players’ strike that should have been called an owners’ strike for the manner in which Coupmissioner Selig and his allies all but forced. The only thing the 1994 strike proved, other than how easy it was to manipulate the sporting press of the time into swallowing the owners’ side without investigating the recipe, was that no former owner should ever be allowed to hold the office Selig helped to besmirch.

So much for “acting” commissioner. It’s alleged that the owners spent six years searching for a permanent commissioner. Then, they decided to just remove “acting” from Coupmissioner Selig’s title.

“Under his leadership, umpiring was centralised and replay review was established” Umpiring became worse enough after its centralisation that replay review, which should have been established well before, became all but mandatory.

What the plaque also leaves off, of course, is that Coupmissioner Selig and enough of his fellow owners looked the other way long enough as actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances poured into the game. Looked the other way and never once sought to investigate the whys. Looked the other way until Capitol Hill decided to fashion player perp walks and threaten to spank the game’s bottom unless it moved. Fast.

Did some players take the actual/alleged PEDs up simply believing others doing it meant they needed to catch up, regardless of whether their chosen substances actually did enable that? Of course they did. Did other players take them up believing they’d help faster injury recovery? Of course they did. (Yes, you can look it up.)

Did Selig and his fellow owners make even a cursory effort to determine who did what and why before Capitol Hill roared? Did they make even a cursory effort to investigate when enough players did speak about the injury reasons they took up the stuff? No to both.

Enough of the players who tried the substances were and still are pilloried, with or without real, hard evidence. The coupmmissioner who averted his gaze before Crapola Hill forced his and the owners’ hands into beginning and securing testing has a plaque in Cooperstown. A plaque that also looks the other way at his role in the owners’ flagrant salary-suppressing collusion of the mid-to-late 1980s that ended up costing them $280 million.

The should-be Hall of Famer who was caught red-handed indulging in Biogenesis-provided substances, and threatened to sue baseball’s heads off over it before accepting his precedent-setting suspension, has been a changed man since that suspension ended.

“Once I put myself in therapy, and the year suspension was two years into that, and it took me, and I’m still in therapy,” A-Rod told Stephen A. Smith. “It’s important to explain to the young people, not just to share, hey, here are my great stats and my home runs, but here’s how I screwed up.”

He even compared himself to Derek Jeter, the Hall of Fame shortstop who was once one of his best friends before an ill-considered remark sullied that friendship and his arrival to the Yankees compelled a reconciliation strained at first.

“Not only the ego but the lack of self-awareness and understanding my place in the clubhouse, understanding my place in the world,” A-Rod went on. “You know, the truth is, Derek is a phenomenal guy. I first met Derek when he was seventeen. I think I’m catching up to Derek at seventeen, now at fifty. Now we’re pretty much on the same level at seventeen. I mean, Derek’s never made a mistake in his life, and I’ve made every mistake in the book. And I love myself for that. I love myself for the good, the bad and the ugly.”

I’ve looked around. Rodríguez doesn’t have a book for sale.

Maybe it’s time to think about enshrining a man who really did try to save baseball from itself, the one who made only one or two mistakes trying. The man about whom Thomas Boswell once wrote that he, “perhaps more than any other commissioner, took his mandate seriously.”

He came to believe that he really should try to act independently in the “best interests of baseball.” Like [predecessor and best friend A. Bartlett] Giamatti, he viewed baseball as an institution that was both indestructibly strong and constantly vulnerable. Nobody could kill it. But plenty of people, from Pete Rose to narrow-minded, dollar-obsessed owners, could tarnish it.

Maybe we can’t purge Coupmissioner Selig from Cooperstown. But we ought to think hard about prodding to have Vincent enshrined. His plaque won’t look half as ill-placed.

First published at Sports Central.