Tag Archives: National Baseball Hall of Fame

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.

BBWAA Hall ballot: Reviewing the holdovers

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Carlos Beltran

Will this be Carlos Beltrán’s year? Or will he have to serve Astrogate penance a bit longer?

The Baseball Writers Association of America’s Hall of Fame ballot for 2026 includes fifteen return engagements. One of them remains a bit troublesome because of something foolish and illegal by baseball’s rules he did in his final season as a player. His voting support has increased since his first turn on the BBWAA ballot. Will all be forgiven this time?

I’ll address the ballot newcomers soon enough. For now, the holdovers . . .

Carlos Beltrán

Before the exposure of the Astro Intelligence Agency’s illegal, off-field-based, electronic sign-stealing operation of 2017-18, Carlos Beltrán figured to have ended his playing career (as the Astros’ 2017 designated hitter) looking forward to accepting a plaque in Cooperstown. That and managing in the major leagues.

The number-nine center fielder of all time (according to Baseball-Reference via Jay Jaffe) who’d been respected as a student of the game and managerial material in the making found himself having to yield the bridge of the Mets (for whom he’d once starred as a player)—before he had the chance even to manage a spring training exhibition.

Though Commissioner Rob Manfred handed all 2017-18 Astro players immunity from discipline in return for spilling AIA deets, Beltrán was the only player Manfred singled out by name in his Astrogate report. It was Beltrán who suggested the Astros needed to “upgrade” from mere replay room reconnaissance, prompting then-bench coach Alex Cora to arrange the long-infamous real-time camera feed to an extra clubhouse monitor for sign deciphering and the long-infamous trash can transmissions.

That was despite Manfred’s September 2017 warning against using replay room reconnaissance and other such off-field chicanery, after the Red Sox (eventually using their own Rogue Sox Replay Room Reconnaissance in 2018 regardless) and the Yankees were caught trying a few tricks from the dugouts.

Beltrán landed the Mets’ managing job twelve days before Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich (in The Athletic) dropped the first full Astrogate revelation in November 2019. Within 72 hours of Manfred’s January 2020 report, all three incumbent managers named in the Rosenthal-Drellich exposure—Beltrán, Cora (who managed the 2018 Red Sox to a World Series championship), and the Astros’ A.J. Hinch (who acted feebly at best when catching onto his AIA cheaters)—were out.

Hinch was fired by Astros owner Jim Crane in hand with general manager Jeff Luhnow, but after sitting out his Manfred-imposed season’s suspension and some very contrite interviews, he found new life on the Tigers’ bridge. Cora sat out his Manfred-imposed season’s suspension, gave a few interviews in which he expressed genuine remorse for his Astrogate role, and was brought back to manage the Red Sox.

Beltrán said little about his Astrogate culpability until he returned to baseball as an analyst for the Yankees’ YES cable television network. There, he owned up in an interview with YES colleague Michael Kay:

Looking back now—yes, we did cross the line. I made my statement about what happened in 2017, and I apologized . . . This happened in such an organic way for ourselves. We all did what we did. Looking back today, we were wrong. I wish I would have asked more questions about what we were doing, I wish the organization would have said to us, “What you guys are doing, we need to stop this.” Nobody really said anything—we’re winning.

Seemingly, Beltrán either didn’t know or chose not to know that “the organisation” as headed by Luhnow was in it up to its kishkes, having deployed the Codebreaker sign-stealing algorithim despite its creator’s warning that it was legal to use only before or after games but not during.

Had Astrogate never happened, Beltrán would have been a very likely first-ballot Hall of Famer. He played twenty seasons, and his peak with the Royals, the Astros (the first time, helping them reach a postseason with his second-half term there), the Mets (helping them to the 2006 postseason), and the Cardinals (two postseasons) was All-Star caliber or better. (He was actually a nine-time All-Star.)

He earned 67.6 wins above replacement-level (WAR) from his first full Kansas City season through the second of two with the Cardinals. That was despite missing significant time due to injuries in his final Met seasons. “Had he not missed substantial portions of three seasons, he might well have reached 3,000 hits,” Jay Jaffe (The Cooperstown Casebook) has written, “but even as it is, he put up impressive, Cooperstown-caliber career numbers. Not only is he one of just eight players with 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, but he also owns the highest stolen base success rate (86.4%) of any player with at least 200 attempts.”

Beltrán is the number seven center fielder all-time for run prevention above his league average with +104. He was rangy, smart on the fielding lanes, and was a top of the line reader of batted balls from his position before Father Time finally began to exact a penalty.

Until Astrogate, of course, Beltrán had only one genuine black mark against him, especially so far as Met fans were concerned: frozen solid by an Adam Wainwright curve ball for strike three called—with the bases loaded, the Mets down two runs, and the pennant on the line in the bottom of the ninth—in Game Seven of the 2006 National League Championship Series.

You know something? It happens. Even to Hall of Famers. Beltrán wasn’t the first superstar to get himself tied up at the last minute of that critical a postseason set, and he won’t be the last. That’s not enough to damage a man’s Hall case. No eleventh-hour shortfall should have been. Not even for Babe Ruth.

You want to continue condemning Beltrán for that? How about The Big Fella getting himself caught stealing on a likely busted run-and-hit play to end the 1926 World Series in the Cardinals’ favour—with Bob Meusel at the plate and Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig on deck?

How about Willie McCovey—with second and third, two out, and the Giants down only 1-0—hitting a howitzer shot speared by Bobby Richardson to end the 1962 Series in the Yankees’ favour instead of sending the tying and maybe winning runs home?

How about Carl Yastrzemski fouling out with two out and the Red Sox down a single run to end the 1975 Series in the Reds’ favour?

How about Mariano Rivera surrendering a Series-losing base hit to Luis Gonzalez in 2001 or—after Dave Roberts stole second off a leadoff walk—an RBI single to Bill Mueller to tie the game at four when the Yankees were only three outs from a 2004 ALCS sweep?

None of those fatalities kept Ruth, McCovey, Yastrzemski, or The Mariano out of Cooperstown when their time eventually came. Getting frozen solid by a great pitch shouldn’t keep Beltrán out, either.

But it’s entirely realistic to suggest that, had Beltrán not gotten himself into the thick of the 21st Century’s worst major league cheating scandal, in his final season as a player, he’d probably be looking at unvarnished, uncontroversial first-ballot Hall of Fame election. Right now, we don’t know how many Hall-voting BBWAA writers will hold it against him enough to make him wait until after his third ballot appearance—or more.

Yes to anyone else?

Andruw Jones

To beat us, you had to go through the Jones boys.—Hall of Famer Chipper Jones on his Braves teammate Andruw Jones.

Andruw Jones—He’s the most run-preventive center fielder who ever played the game. He was a whale of a hitter as a Brave, too; injuries (and the sour attitude that emanated from them) once he left Atlanta turned him into a sadly declining shell of his former self. But those great Braves seasons should have been more than enough to enshrine him long before this. Yes.

Chase Utley—Maybe the most underrated middle infielder of his time. Deserved several Gold Gloves that he didn’t win. Hit with brains as well as skill and handled himself on the bases even more so. He was worth almost twice as many defensive runs as his Philadelphia double play partner Jimmy Rollins. His peak value is above the Hall standard; his career value only slightly below it, but Utley does deserve the honour. Yes.

The Rest of the Holdovers

Bobby Abreu—He’s a lot closer to being a bona fide Hall of Famer than you think or remember. He was a disciplined five-tooler and few of his time were as good as he was for wearing pitchers down. And he was a good, above-average defensive right fielder. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t remain on the BBWAA ballot.

If not, a future Contemporary Era Committee just might give Abreu a review. His peak WAR is just too close to the Hall of Fame peak average. Maybe.

Mark Buehrle—He was a good pitcher who touched greatness occasionally; a no-hitter and a perfect game prove that. He used a deft off-speed mix and ground balls to thrive. He was also an excellent fielder. But the traditional and advanced numbers don’t get Buehrle through the gate, and his postseason record doesn’t help him. Neither do four league leaderships in most hits surrendered.

The number 79 starting pitcher overall, and still beloved on Chicago’s South Side, Buehrle still might linger on the ballot awhile. No.

Félix Hernández–King Felix pushed the door open that said a pitcher’s won-lost record was probably the least sensible way to judge his work. His heavy early workload took a toll on him; his questionable conditioning caught up to him his final four seasons.

He was a terrific pitcher for a good while, the best in the American League for five seasons. But it wasn’t enough to make him a peak value case, and losing both his fastball and his deadly changeup hurt too much. No.

Torii Hunter—He was good enough to play nineteen seasons. He was a decent hitter but not as run preventive a center field defender as you might have guessed. (Hunter earned nine Gold Gloves the last eight of which may have been off the rep he established in his one plus-run prevention defensive season.)

He’s also remembered as a good clubhouse guy whom teams almost couldn’t wait to add when he was available. But as employable as he was for nineteen years, he’s short enough of a plaque. No.

Dustin Pedroia—Career killed by injury, taking him out before he could finish solidifying the Hall case he was certainly making before that. P.S. You can also stop blaming Manny Machado for the end; by his own admission, Pedroia was foolish enough to try playing through that one and put paid to his career before it should have happened.

Regardless, he’s still the best second baseman in the history of the Red Sox, even if he’s barely the number 20 of all. Maybe.

Andy Pettitte—Jaffe says it better: Pettitte was a plow horse, not a race horse: [B]ased upon both traditional and advanced metrics, Pettitte would represent a rather weak choice for the Hall of Fame—and I say that as somebody who had a considerable emotional investment in his career as a fan and would like nothing more than to find a rationale for electing him . . . although he’s probably not a fit for Cooperstown, flags fly forever, and he’ll always be fondly remembered in the Bronx. No.

Manny Ramirez—Pettitte’s hGH dalliance (to recover from an elbow injury) happened during the so-called Wild West Era, when the game and the world looked the other way. (So did the reputed indulgences of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.) Manny Being Manny included two failed tests for actual/alleged performance-enhancing substances after baseball started testing in earnest.

How foolish could you get? Not even at gunpoint or under presidential threat, whichever comes first.

Álex Rodríguez—Dubious as MLB’s handling of Biogenesis probably was, that didn’t mitigate A-Rod’s using their wares or threats to sue baseball to death to escape punishment, until he was slapped with that massive suspension. He’s rehabilitated his public image to a certain extent since, but I’m not convinced that’s enough to clear his way to Cooperstown yet. P.S. His ranking as a shortstop is almost entirely in his bat; Ozzie Smith he wasn’t. No.

Francisco Rodríguez—From his embryonic supersplash in the 2002 postseason through the rest of his Angels years, K-Rod looked like the very essence of a Hall of Fame reliever who wasn’t named Mariano Rivera, and it wasn’t just his saves count, either.

After he left the Angels, his career was stained when he became involved in a couple of unsavoury domestic violence incidents, one of which (as a Met) injured his thumb when he punched his girlfriend’s father repeatedly, and another (as a Brewer) in which he attacked his then-fiancée. (Case dismissed when she and a household staff member who saw the incident returned to Venezuela, according to numerous reports.)

After his major league life faded, he tried coming back via the independent and Mexican leagues before calling it a career. It’s a question of whether his domestic violence issues will block him, the way they may keep blocking Omar Vizquel. (Andruw Jones pleaded guilty without fuss, paid a hefty fine, and no other such incident seems known of him.) For me, being multiple, they do. No.

Jimmy Rollins—The goods: solid shortstop defense and speed on the bases. The bads: a 95 OPS+; a .330 on-base percentage that isn’t quite what you should find in a Hall of Fame leadoff hitter; and, his basepath larceny didn’t make him a Lou Brock Hall of Fame lookalike. Not to mention that his +38 defensive runs at shortstop are 53rd all-time.

You loved watching him play in his prime even if he was trying to beat you, though, and he was one of those trash talkers who made you laugh instead of scream. But still. Not quite.

Omar Vizquel–He may have been the outstanding defense-first shortstop of the 1990s, but 1) his highlight reels in the advent of widespread cable television masked that he wasn’t quite as good defensively as Cal Ripken, Jr., never mind Ozzie Smith; and, 2) splendid as his defense was, Vizquel still shakes out as the number 42 shortstop ever.

That’s not a Hall of Famer, and that’s not counting subsequent issues of domestic violence and sexual harassment that may keep him unemployed in the game. No.

David Wright—He’s the Mets’s version of Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy: A character-to-burn guy whose Hall of Fame case was snuffed by injuries. He was the heart and soul of the Mets before the injuries began blocking him, but they’ll never forget that 2015 World Series home run that surely qualifies as the biggest blast of his past.

Yes, Wright deserved better. His uniform number retirement should amplify that. No, with regret.

Some portions of this essay—first published by Sports Central—have been published previously.

Dave Parker, RIP: Presence

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Dave Parker

The Cobra had a blast playing baseball–and he leveled a few blasts, too . . .

Dave Parker almost lived long enough to take the Cooperstown podium for his Hall of Fame induction. A long-enough battler with Parkinson’s disease, there had been a time when Parker wondered whether it was his own fault he hadn’t or wouldn’t be elected to the Hall.

The Classic Baseball Era Committee elected him last December. The Cobra died at 74 Saturday, 29 days before he’d have been up on that stage. Not fair.

Even before his notoriety during the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials, Parker could have caused a lot of people to wonder the same thing. Power hitter though he might be, he also played with the attitude of scrappy little middle infielders.

On the bases he thought infielders plus catchers were nothing more than papier mache walls through which to run. not living breathing humans liable to stand just as strong against him as the linebackers against whom he played as a high school running back. Describing him as a Sherman tank running on high test would not have been inaccurate.

Those caused him injuries that got in the way of his performance more often than not as time went on. His admitted cocaine use at the drug trials surely did, too. He might apologise for having been a fool, but Parker never once shied away from taking responsibility for his own self.

That classic prankish-looking face and that classic wisenheimer smile—invariably, Parker resembled a man unable to mask that he’d just detonated a ferocious prank somewhere within the vicinity—married his jaw-dropping power at the plate to make the Cobra look as though he couldn’t wait to carve his autograph into a hapless pitcher’s cranium and make the poor sap laugh his fool head off over it.

His self-worth was bottomless and unapologetic. He wasn’t even close to kidding when he told a fan trying to get the best possible angle for a cell phone camera shot, “It wouldn’t take much to make me look good.” But what made him look better was his reputation for team leadership wherever he played.

In Pittsburgh and in Oakland he was part and parcel of World Series winners. In between, he had a memorable stop in Cincinnati, where his manager was Pete Rose and he sat on deck one fine day in Wrigley Field, about to close a road trip out, awaiting manager Rose’s decision on what player Rose would do at the plate—and whether player Rose would take a final shot at passing Ty Cobb on the all-time hit list in the bargain.

Parker’s presence helped Rose make his decision. Manager Rose knew his Reds had only the slimmest shot at staying in the 1985 pennant race and that nobody batting behind Parker was liable to deliver the clutch hit. A sacrifice bunt would have left first base open and the Cubs liable for malpractise if they pitched to Parker rather than put him on to go for the weaker pickings behind him.

Never mind every Red fan on the planet plus their (shall we say) mercurial owner Marge Schott demanding Rose bunt and save the big hit for the home folks. Manager Rose ordered Player Rose to swing away knowing that would give his team just enough more chance to win—but he struck out. It was the most honourable strikeout of Rose’s life. Maybe the most honourable play of it, too. Imagine if Parker wasn’t on deck.

Once he cleaned up from his cocaine issue, Parker’s clubhouse leadership came back to the fore. Making him the kind of guy who had big value to his team even when he slumped. Your clubhouse might be a lot more fun but it would also become a lot more baloney-proof.

As a matter of fact, that clubhouse value shone brightest when the Cobra left Oakland after their 1989 Series triumph, but the Athletics got swept out of the 1990 Series—by a Reds team picking itself up and dusting itself off after Rose’s violations of Rule 21(d) cost him his professional baseball career.

Stop snarling and let Thomas Boswell (who will be in Cooperstown that July weekend accepting his Career Excellence Award induction) explain, as he did in a sharp post mortem analysing just how those mighty A’s could have been humbled by those underdog but hardly modest Reds:

Where is Dave Parker when you need a clubhouse enforcer? The A’s always knew, sooner or later, they’d need Big Dave to quell a cell-block riot, just as the ’77 Reds desperately missed Tony Perez after they traded him. In ’88 [Jose] Canseco popped off about beating the Dodgers in five games. The Dodgers won in five. In ’89 Parker promised to clean, stuff, and mount Jose if he spoke above a whisper. The A’s swept. Now Dave’s gone, Jose predicted a sweep. General manager Sandy Alderson makes a lot of good moves, but saving money on Parker may have cost him a world title.

Dave Parker

“Where is Dave Parker when you need a clubhouse enforcer?” The A’s missed Parker more than they thought when they let him escape after 1989.

“He’s one of the greatest teammates I’ve ever had,” said Parker’s Oakland teammate, pitcher Dave Stewart, a man who looked like six parts commando and half a dozen parts assassin on the mound. “He had such a presence when he walked into the room.”

“He used to say, ‘When the leaves turn brown, I will be wearing the crown’,” said Keith Hernandez, who played against Parker as a Cardinal and a Met and saw Parker win the National League batting title back to back. “Until I usurped his crown in ’79. He was a better player than me. RIP.”

Until his illness made it difficult if not near impossible, Parker’s post-playing days included working as a special batting instructor for the Pirates. Longtime Pirates star Andrew McCutchen was one of those who learned a few things from the Cobra.

“It was rough to see him go through that,” said McCutchen in a formal statement. “I just hope now he’s in a better place and not having to worry about that stuff anymore . . . He was probably Superman to a lot of people when he played.”

Parker’s kryptonite turned out to be Parkinson’s. “I’m having good days, bad days, just like everybody else,” he told a Pennsylvania radio station four years ago. “My bad days, you just got to play the hand that’s dealt. And I know that it’s something that I got to deal with for the rest of my life.”

One of his ways of dealing with it was setting up the Dave Parker 39 Foundation (39 was his uniform number), raising money to continue research into finding a cure for the disease whose other famed victims have included actor Michael J. Fox, boxing legend Muhammad Ali, singer Linda Ronstadt, and Pope John Paul II.

Pirates middle infielder Nick Gonzales wears Parker’s old number 39. He said Saturday, learning Parker had just passed, “It just meant a little more playing today with that number. Personally, I think it should be retired. I think I should get a new number, honestly.”

That kind of tribute would be one of two Parker might appreciate from his new eternal perch in the Elysian Fields. The other was the Pirates doing just what they did Saturday, thumping the higher-flying Mets 9-2 a day after they thumped them 9-1. And the Cobra didn’t have to promise to clean, stuff, and mount anyone to make it happen, either.

Trump threatens to pardon Rose

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Pete Rose

The late Pete Rose, shown at a signing table at 2023’s GalaxyCon in Columbus, Ohio.

Those to whom Donald Trump points the way to wisdom by standing athwart it have further evidence to present. The president who thinks (yes, those four words isolated by themselves would flunk a polygraph) he knows all says he will pardon the late Pete Rose. On which grounds, you ask?

Let the man speak a moment:

Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as “Charlie Hustle,” into the Baseball Hall of fame. Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME! Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING. He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!

Is there anyone within the oatmeal-for-brains arterials of the second Trump Administration with the will and the backbone to counsel him that he’s talking through his chapeau? Seeing none thus far, I volunteer, though I’m not of the Trump or any other government administration.

To begin, unless Trump speaks of Rose’s conviction and sentence served for tax evasion having to do with his income from memorabilia shows and sales, his power of the pardon doesn’t reach major league or other professional baseball.

Herewith a memory refreshment for the president who once opined—erroneously, unless Congress is still foolish enough to transfer its responsibilities to the White House—that Article II of the Constitution, which codifies the president’s job, enabled him to do as he damn well pleased: From Section 2, Article II: The President shall . . . have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Rose’s violations of Rule 21 weren’t legal offences against the United States. Moral and cultural violations are other stories, of course. (And how, when it came to Rose, alas.) Sorry, Mr. President. (That’s Mr. President, not Your Majesty, Your [In]excellency, or Your Lordship.) That only begins to convict you of erroneous assault with a dead weapon.

Consider: Rule 21’s prohibition of MLB personnel betting on MLB games does. not. distinguish. between betting on one’s team to win and betting on one’s team to lose. The notebooks whose revelations affirmed the depth of Rose’s betting on baseball that began while he was a player/manager affirmed concurrently that there were days aplenty when Rose’s baseball bets didn’t include bets on his Reds.

Read carefully, please: In the world of street/underground/extralegal gambling, a player or other team personnel known to bet on baseball but not laying a bet down on his team on a particular game sends signals to other street/underground/ extralegal gamblers not to bet or take betting action on that team. That’s as de facto betting against your team as you can get.

Now, about that business of, “He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history.” Rule 21 doesn’t make exceptions for players who achieve x number of milestones or records. Especially not the clause that meant Rose’s permanent (not lifetime) banishment: Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible.

Did you see any exception for actual or alleged Hit Kings?

If you count Nippon Professional Baseball as major league level, and its quality of play says you should, Rose’s 4,256 hits don’t make him the Hit King—but it does crown as such freshly-minted Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki with his 4,367, between nine seasons with the Orix Blue Wave (Japan Pacific League) and nineteen seasons with the Mariners, the Yankees, and the Marlins.

Did you see any exception for those who “won” more games than anyone in sports history?

Modesty wasn’t exactly among Rose’s virtues, but he liked only to brag that he had played in more winning major league baseball games than anyone who ever suited up. Played in. Even Rose never once said or suggested that he won those games all by his lonesome, with no help from the pitchers and the fielders who kept the other guys from putting runs on the scoreboard, or with no help from the other guys in the lineup who reached base and came home.

Baseball is “not in the pardon business,” said Rose’s original investigator John Dowd, in a statement to ESPN, “nor does it control admission to the [Hall of Fame].” Baseball’s commissioner could have reinstated Rose any old time he chose. The Hall of Fame, which is not governed by MLB though the commissioner sits on its board, enacts its own rules, including the rule barring those on the permanently-ineligible list from appearing on any Hall ballot.

Rose tried and failed to get two commissioners to end his banishment. The trail of years during which he lied, lied again, and came clean only to a certain extent. And he did the last only when it meant he could peddle a book. “[W]hat had once been a sensation,” his last and best biographer Keith O’Brien wrote (in Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball), “quickly became yet another public relations crisis for Pete Rose.”

Somehow, his book managed to upset almost everyone . . . He refused to admit that he bet on baseball in 1986 while he was still a player, despite evidence showing otherwise. At times, he painted himself as the victim. Even the book title–My Prison Without Bars–sounded whiny, as if he hadn’t helped build the prison walls with his own choices . . . He picked fights over little pieces of evidence instead of taking full responsibility for his mistakes. He didn’t sound very sorry, critics said, and reinstatement eluded him every time he asked for it: in 2004, in 2015 and 2020, and in 2022. Nothing changed. If anything, his situation only grew worse.

Not even Rose’s jocularity when signing autographs or bantering with fans who met him in the years since his banishment could rescue him. Perhaps that was because, in part, it was tough to tell whether he was just kidding or sending none-too-subtle zingers at the critics he really believed done him wrong. Sorry I bet on baseball. No Justin Bieber, I’m sorry. Build the wall for Pete’s sake. Sorry I broke up the Beatles. I’m sorry I shot J.F.K. About the only thing missing was, I’m sorry I built the Pontiac Aztek.

Only one man was responsible for Rose’s exile to baseball’s Phantom Zone. It wasn’t his original investigators, or the commissioner who banished him under the rules, or the commissioners who denied his reinstatement petitions in the years that followed until his death of hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease last fall.

“All his adult life,” wrote another freshly-minted Hall of Famer (writer’s wing division), Thomas Boswell, after Rose was first banished in August 1989, “he has thought, and been encouraged to think, that he was outside the normal rules of human behaviour and above punishment. In his private life, in his friendships, in his habits, he went to the edge, then stepped over, trusting his luck because—well, because he was the Great Pete Rose.”

Funny, but with just a name change at the end, and regardless of party affiliation or ideological core, you could say the same thing about more than one president of the United States. Including and especially the once and current incumbent.