If Andre Dawson has his way, his Hall of Fame plaque will change from showing him as an Expo to showing him as a Cub.
Even before any new Hall of Famers are elected, the question (and controversy?) about hat logos on the plaque portraits has arisen. You can thank Hall of Famer Andre Dawson for that, now that his letter on the subject to the Hall’s chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark was publicised by the Chicago Tribune.
Dawson asked Clark to compel her board to review his plaque and its hat logo. When he was elected to the Hall’s Class of 2010, the Hall elected to adorn him in a Montreal Expos hat. Dawson wasn’t exactly amused, since his own preference was to be shown in a Cubs hat.
“It’s hard for stuff to bother me, to a degree,” the Hawk told Tribune columnist Paul Sullivan. “But this has toyed with me over the years for the simple reason that I was approached with the (announcement) that was going to be released to the press that I was going to wear an Expos emblem.
“I didn’t agree with it at the time,” he continued. “But for me, getting into the Hall was the most important thing. Over time, I’ve thought about it more and came to the (conclusion) I should have had some say-so.”
No one should be surprised that Dawson would prefer being seen as a Cub. He was a victim of the first 1980s owners’ collusion, the Expos offering him a two-year deal that amounted to an annual pay cut from his 1986 salary of $1.2 million. That’s when his agent, Dick Moss, sold him on the blank-contract idea that drew the Cubs to him.
He went from the blank-contract fill-in of $500,000 from the Cubs for 1987 to win that year’s National League Most Valuable Player award, after leading the league with 49 home runs and 353 total bases. That was despite several players having arguable better seasons, including Hall of Famers Tony Gwynn, Tim Raines (Dawson’s longtime Montreal teammate), and Ozzie Smith, plus Cardinals bomber Jack (The Ripper) Clark.
Dawson parlayed that gambit into five years and $10.6 million, not to mention shaking out as a particular Wrigley Field fan favourite. After finishing his career with two seasons in Boston and two in Miami, Dawson needed nine tries to reach Cooperstown but reach it he did. It came with a price. The artificial turf in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium turned the Hawk’s knees into science experiments; he’d had as many as a reputed ten knee surgeries.
Even the president of Expos Fest, Terry Giannias, whose group celebrates the Expos’ history, gets it. “I’m not going to lie,” Giannias told MSN.com, “it sort of was like a shot in the gut.” But neither would Giannias lie about why he gets Dawson’s feelings:
I just know what everybody else knows, is the way he left the Expos. When you talk about the stars of the Montreal Expos, especially in the ’80s . . . and in the 35 years (of their existence) in general, it’s Andre Dawson, Tim Raines and Gary Carter, right? So, when Carter moved on, when they got rid of him, the prodigal son should have been Andre and the way they treated him during the collusion thing . . . that was really dirty. I don’t know if somebody forgets that. Obviously, that plays a role in it. But I don’t believe it’s got much to do about that anymore, but just his love for Chicago, because Chicago embraced him, like right away and he’s had a great relationship with the city ever since. So I think it’s less of a grudge and more of an appreciation for his adopted city, he’s an ambassador there.
Carter was vocal about his preference to enter the Hall of Fame as a Met; he’d often withstood unjust criticism in Montreal before being traded to the Mets in 1985 and becoming a key to their 1986 triumph while having his last great seasons there. The Hall said, no soap, you’re going in as an Expo.
When did the Hall become that picayune about cap logos on Hall of Famers’ plaques? Hark back to 1999, when then-future Hall of Famer Wade Boggs was winding up his career with the embryonic (Devil) Rays.
Boggs was going to get to Cooperstown on his first try, in 2005. Nobody but a cynic argued otherwise. But some time in 1999, there came reports that the Rays offered to compensate Boggs handsomely if he’d consent to enter the Hall with their logo on his plaque hat. Two years later, the Hall said, well, we’ll just see about that crap. Long since, with exceptions you may be able to count on one hand, the Hall has exercised the final say on who wears which hat on his plaque, even after “consulting” with the player.
Boggs, of course, reposes in bronze in Cooperstown with a Red Sox hat on his head. Appropriately, since he posted the bulk of his credentials with the Olde Towne Team. But he also debunked the reports about the Rays’ compensation offer six years ago. “I think it came from when Jose Canseco said, ‘If I get in the Hall of Fame, I’m going in as a Devil Ray’,” Boggs told WFAN. “And someone probably misconstrued that I said that and that [original Rays owner Vincent] Naimoli offered me a million dollars to be the first Devil Ray to go into the Hall of Fame, and that conversation never took place.”
Last year, the Hall “consulted” with Scott Rolen, then assented to his request to be shown as a Cardinal. Understandably, Rolen preferred to be shown as a member of the team that made him feel both at home and like the World Series champion he became with them in 2006. Not as a member of the Phillies, who’d too often let him become an undeserved fall guy for their organisational failures prior to his departure.
Last year, too, the Hall “consulted” with Fred McGriff, who elected with their blessing to have his hat left blank. He was a frequent-enough traveler, often for reasons not of his own making, and his longest single-team tenures were a dead heat between the Blue Jays (five years) and the Braves (five years). The Crime Dog decided that a man who played for six teams (seven if you include the Yankees who discovered but unloaded him in the first place) simply shouldn’t choose one above the other in the circumstances.
When Mike Mussina was elected at last, he had a pretty pickle to ponder: his career split almost dead even between the Orioles (ten seasons) and the Yankees (eight seasons). Perhaps diplomatically, Mussina, too, elected to be blank on his plaque.
Roy Halladay’s career split twelve seasons in Toronto and four in Philadelphia. He’d posted most of his Hall case with the Blue Jays, but he did win a second Cy Young Award with the Phillies (the fifth pitcher to win one in each league), not to mention pitching that no-hitter in Game One of the 2010 National League division series. The Hall talked to his widow. Brandy Halladay elected to leave her late husband’s hat blank, not wishing to offend either team or its fans.
The rare single-team players have never had an issue, of course. (How rare? 23 percent of 270 players elected to Cooperstown as of this writing have been single-team players.) It was no issue for such men as Luke (Old Aches and Pains) Appling, Jeff Bagwell, Johnny Bench, Craig Biggio, Roberto Clemente, George Brett, Joe DiMaggio, Roy Campanella, Lou Gehrig, Bob Gibson, Tony Gwynn, Derek Jeter, Walter Johnson, Chipper Jones, Al Kaline, Barry Larkin, Mickey Mantle, Edgar Martínez, Stan Musial, Pee Wee Reese, Mariano Rivera, Jackie Robinson, Jim Rice, Mike Schmidt, Ted Williams, and Carl Yastrzemski, among the Hall’s 54 single-team men.
If elected as they should be, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer are also single-team men who would go in as a Rockie and a Twin, respectively. The blank hat makes sense for players with multiple franchises on their resumés if they didn’t spend, say, 65 percent or more of their career with just one. Andruw Jones should go in as a Brave; Chase Utley, a Phillie; Billy Wagner, an Astro.
Adrián Beltré is trickier. He played seven season with the Dodgers and his final eight with the Rangers. (In between, there were five in Seattle and one in Boston.) Under Frank McCourt’s heavily mortgaged and controversial ownership, the Dodgers let him walk as a free agent in 2004, after he led the entire Show with 48 home runs. Considering his relationship with and in Texas, if he doesn’t enter Cooperstown with a Rangers hat on his plaque head there will (should) be protests up and down the Lone Star State.
A player who posted the bulk of his Hall case with one team has a better case to be shown with that team’s hat. Unless, of course, he went from mere Hall of Famer to triple superstar elsewhere. (Think, for example, of Vladimir Guerrero, Sr. as an Angel, Reggie Jackson as a Yankee, and Randy Johnson as a Diamondback.) But then there was Greg Maddux. Born and raised a Cub, but going from mere greatness to off-the-charts as a Brave. He put two more teams on his resumé and elected to be inducted with a blank lid.
The blank might have worked for Dawson, too, until you consider his actual feeling about it. He might have been a star in Montreal, but after the Expos colluded his way out of town he became more than than that in Wrigleyville. That daring blank-contract MVP season turned not just into further riches but a love affair. The North Side embraced him and he returned the embraces.
Even after leaving as a free agent, even though he participates occasionally in Expos-related events, Dawson’s heart probably never truly left Chicago. If the Hall reconsiders and gives the Hawk his heart’s desire here, it would be the first time the Hall ever flipped an inductee’s lid at his request. That assent would not come without complications.
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