MadBum, Hodges, and....Peter Pan and Social Media

Selected Short Subjects.....

Sports Illustrated announced yesterday that San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner will be its Sportsman of the Year for 2014.  Regular readers know that I stand in awe of the post-season performance, and in particular, the World Series performance of Bumgarner throughout this past season's MLB Playoffs and World Series.  I made a case that Bumgarner is the greatest World Series pitcher, over the course of a career, in all World Series history, and I got very few arguments when I did so.

This is one year where Sports Illustrated most definitely got it right.

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The Golden Era Committee of the Baseball Hall of Fame made their long awaited announcement yesterday, and the results were somewhat surprising: Nobody was elected by the Committee to the Hall of Fame.  Not Jim Kaat, not Richie Allen, not Minnie Minoso, and not Gil Hodges. Nobody.

Just as I predicted, Facebook erupted with rancorous posts and comments from the legion of Gil Hodges supporters out there.  As for me, I am going to try to follow the advice of friend Joe Risacher and stay out of Hall of Fame debates.  To those in despair over this, I say, as might Aaron Rodgers, Relax.  The sun will come up tomorrow, Obla Di Obla Da Life Goes On, and be very thankful that the biggest problem in your life is whether or not some ball player is or is not in his sports's Hall of Fame.

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Like many of you, I watched NBC's live telecast of "Peter Pan" last Thursday evening.

It was a pleasant enough experience.  Allison Williams, with whom I was completely unfamiliar, was charming enough in the title role, Christopher Walken was miscast as Captain Hook and seemed to phone it in, and there was the cachet of seeing a live performance on television that made it intriguing to watch.

All in all, as I said, a pleasant viewing experience.  Like so many things on TV these days, NBC promoted different hash tags in the corner of the screen throughout so that viewers could Tweet, Facebook, and use other forms of social media as they watched the show.  Out of curiosity, when the show was over, I went to Twitter and entered some of the hash tags to see what people said, and I was shocked, although perhaps I shouldn't have been, over the viciousness and meanness of the comments made.  I didn't tote them up, but if I had to guess, I would say that barely one in twenty comments had anything good to say about the show, and no one stopped with a simple "I don't like it".  Their comments had to be mean, vicious, and snarky to the nth degree.  I mean, if the show is THAT bad in your eyes, why are you even watching it in the first place?

It made me resolve to be a lot more cognizant of some if the things that I put out there on Twitter, Facebook, and, yes, The Grandstander.

Oh, and one last comment on Allison Williams.  In addition to being attractive and talented, she has to have the most beautiful set of teeth that I have ever seen.  Honest to God, her teeth were absolutely dazzling.  Beautiful choppers!

Hall of Famers? (continued)

Yesterday's post about the worthiness, or lack of same, for Hall of Fame enshrinement for two unidentified ballplayers, elicited over 70 responses when I posted it on my Facebook page and the Pirate Chat page.  Interestingly enough, most people, looking at the statistics, said that, given the facts in front of them, they would choose NOT to include either player in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Now, just who were those players?

Player A is Rocky Colavito.

As was obvious from the numbers, Colavito had a good to very good major league career, but he never went beyond single digit percentages when his name came before the Hall of Fame voters, and there is, as near as I can tell, absolutely no grass roots support to get old Rock into Cooperstown.

Player B, as many of you have already guessed, is Gil Hodges.

I have often written and talked about the passion that is ignited among many when the phrases "Gil Hodges" and "Hall of Fame" come up in the same sentence.  There are thousands of people out there who will launch into impassioned arguments stating why Gil belongs in the Hall of Fame.  I have no doubt that when this post hits the cyber-waves, many such arguments will be put forth.  In his years of eligibility, Hodges support among the baseball writers who vote on Hall of Fame membership ranged anywhere from 24% to 63%.

The Hodges supporters will give you reams upon reams of data as to why Gil belongs.  However, many of the arguments always seem to come down to this:

1. He played most of his career in the greater New York City area, as a beloved member of the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers "Boys of Summer" teams.
2. He was a really, really nice guy.
3. He managed the New York Mets to the 1969 World Series title. 

As to Point 1, perhaps Hodges suffers from the same syndrome as does the Steelers L.C. Greenwood - too many guys from the same team already in the HOF.

As to Point 2, doesn't and shouldn't have anything to do with HOF worthiness.

As to Point 3, sorry, but there are a lot of managers who have won one World Series.  This isn't what should get Gil into Cooperstown, if he ever does get there.

My question always has been, would the passion to get Hodges into Cooperstown be the same had he played his entire career in, say, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, or Milwaukee, rather than in New York City/Brooklyn?  We'll never know the answer to that particular question.

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I have no emotional connection here, one way or the other.  If Hodges ever gets voted in by whatever they are calling the Veteran's Committee these days, more power to him.  I would be happy for his family and all those many, many people who love him.  And if he never gets in, I am okay with that, too, because if that happens, what about Colavito and all those other "similar" players (Greg Luzinski, Willie Horton, Jack Clark, Frank Howard et al) that I mentioned in yesterday's post?  That, I realize, opens up an entirely new and different HOF can of worms.  

Anyway, this is just the kind of fun stuff that we baseball fans love to debate, isn't it?

Baseball Hall of Fame Thoughts

The announcement that came yesterday that Greg Maddux,

Tom Glavine, 

and Frank Thomas

had been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame came as no great surprise, and with no great controversy (although there was some; more on that later).  No reasonable baseball fan or student of the game could seriously argue that any of these guys should not be enshrined.  I myself have some specific memories of seeing Greg Maddux pitch in games against the Pirates, and he was an absolute artist on the mound.  He was not possessed with an overpowering fast ball (like Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson), he never led the league in strike outs, for example, but he completely dominated the era in which he pitched, winning 355 games.  That he could not carry that domination into post season play (11-14; 2-3 in the World Series) is a bit of a head scratcher, but, hey, it is such anomolies that make baseball such a fun sport to follow.

Similarly, Glavine, a 300 game winner, five time 20 game winner (as was Maddux), and Thomas, 521 HR, .301 career BA, and .974 career OPS, are more than worthy to have their plaques on the wall in Cooperstown. 

So, congratulations to all of them.

Now, for the controversy.....

Ten voters did not include Maddux on the ballot.  Not a surprise because it is the smug position of these self-important BBWA voters that they make sure that no one EVER gets in unanimously, but more significant, one guy from mlb.com went public that he will never vote for Maddux, or anyone else, from the so called "Steroid Era" of major league baseball.  Never mind that Maddux had never, to my knowledge, had even hints about him concerning use of PED's.   At this point, if this guy is so principled, I would hope that he would simply have his named removed as an eligible elector, but most baseball writers would sooner sacrifice their first born child than give up receiving that HOF ballot.  

Munch more heinous, in my opinion, was Miami Herald writer and ESPN personalty Dan LeBatard simply giving his ballot to Deadspin to complete.  If you don't like the system, then resign from it, or submit an empty ballot in protest, but to give it to someone else to complete is an abrogation of this responsibility.  I would hope that LeBatard would be censured by the BBWA and that his right to vote on the HOF be rescinded.

Speaking of the Steroid Era, the number of votes for guys like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Mark McGwire continued to decline.  I have been torn by this issue, but I am coming round to the opinion, expressed by such respected writers as Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe, that we should not be judge and jury on these guys and since we may never know who did and did not use, he, Ryan, excludes no one when he votes based upon admitted or suspected PED use.  If the trend continues as it seems to be going, fifty years from now visitors will see a lot of "pretty good" players (Barry Larkin, Robby Alomar) from this era in the HOF, while the very best players of the era (Bonds, Clemens, Mike Piazza to name a few) will be excluded.   I could probably be talked out of it, but I truly think that Bonds and Clemens, and, yes, Alex Rodriguez, and some others, belong in the HOF.

By the way, Pete Rose is NOT in this category.  His crime, betting on ball games, is the one cardinal, unbreakable rule in baseball, and he broke it.  He belongs on the outside.

Also, by the way, the Hall of Fame, that is, the museum portion of the institution, to its credit, does not exclude these guys, as I have written before.  If you visit the Museum, you will see that Pete Rose is the all-time leader in hits, and that he was an integral part of one of the great teams of his generation (the Big Red Machine), and you will see that Barry Bonds is the all-time home run leader, and that Roger Clemens won over 300 games and multiple Cy Young Awards. They have not been declared non-persons and expunged from history.

Jack Morris also failed to be elected in this his final year of eligibility.  This has caused a degree of consternation among some folks.  His detractors point to a career ERA of 3.90, but to me, his 256 wins are significant.  However, I have long adopted a position that whether a guy who deserves it is not in the Hall (Morris?), or that a guy who does not deserve it (and there are many) is in, is not something that I spend a lot of time worrying about.  If the electors, be it the BBWA or the cronies on the Vet's Committee put a guy in, then good for that guy, and if a deserving guy has not yet been tapped, well, I won't lose sleep over it.

I get a kick out of a Cult that seems to have developed among a certain sector of Baseball Fandom that are fanatical over the fact that Gil Hodges is not in the Hall of Fame.  Bring up this subject on certain listservs, message boards, or certain Facebook chat pages, and your computer will blow up with people telling you what a massive injustice it is that Hodges is not in the Hall, to which people will then vigorously respond that there are good reasons why he has never been enshrined.  The irony is that Hodges' name and memory is more alive today, because he is not in the HOF, than it would be had he been elected to the Hall thirty or so years ago.

Anyway, arguing about such stuff with such passion is what makes being a baseball fan so much fun, I suppose.

Wrapping Up the Gil Hodges HOF Thread

Last Friday I posted an entry on The Grandstander asking people to justify why Gil Hodges is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Trust me, there is an army of folks out there who believe he should be in the HOF, and will back up their claims with voluminous documentation.  I wanted to hear from the Other Side of the Argument.  I posted my blog entry on the SABR Listserv board and on several Facebook Chat pages in which I participate.

And I did hear from people.  Lots of them.  I won't go into all of what was submitted to me, some of it, frankly, was a lot of SABRmetric gobblety-gook, but, basically, it all came down to "Gil was a good to very good ball player, but he was and is, at best, a borderline Hall of Famer, like a lot of other players for whom no one is beating the drums for HOF entry".  I also got a lot of arguments along the lines of "two thirds of the guys IN the Hall shouldn't be there, so why compound this error by including yet another borderline guy".

Both sides are correct, I conclude.  Hall of Fame immortality is a subjective topic at best.  One local BBWA guy in Pittsburgh applies what he calls the "think test" when he fills out his HOF ballot.  In other words. "if I have to think about whether this guy belongs in the Hall of Fame, he probably doesn't belong", and I can't argue with that logic.  Looking at HOF players I have seen in my lifetime as a fan (1959 to present)...Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Mike Schmidt?  Absolutely!  Gary Carter, Don Sutton, Phil Niekro, Jim Rice? Well, those guys I gotta think about, but that's just me, but if someone else, writers or a Vet's Committee, says they are Hall of Famers, I salute them as such.

I recognize the passion of certain fan bases for promoting their favorite sons, and the Brooklyn Dodgers Boys of Summer Cult no doubt plays a large role in the support for Hodges.   As a Pirates fan, I am tickled to death that Bill Mazeroski went in in 1999, but I know that there would be a lot of people leading the charge to take him OUT of the Hall of that was ever done.  I hope Hodges makes it some day, but if he doesn't, well, that doesn't mean that the other side is wrong.

So Tell Me, Why ISN'T Gil Hodges in the Hall of Fame?

Since I have been involved with SABR and become part of several baseball discussion groups on various social media, I can tell you that there is no topic - none! - that stirs the fires and passions of a certain segment of the baseball community than the fact that Gil Hodges is not an enshrined member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Ask the question or making a comment either for or against Hodges being in the Hall on certain Facebook pages, and you are absolutely certain to be starting a thread that will generate thirty, forty, fifty or more comments.

Myself, I had no particular bias one way or the other.  If a guy makes the Hall of Fame, I'm happy for him, but if a certain player doesn't, I don't lose sleep over it either, and I always found the debates amusing, especially when it veers into the area of "O'Malley's-a-bastard-for-taking-the-Dodgers-out-of-Brooklyn".  However, this is what being a baseball fan is all about, and some folks have embraced this cause with an amazing passion.  Facebook friend and Pirate Chatter Scott Russell has compiled some documentation that has absolutely convinced me that Hodges should be in the Hall of Fame.

All of this brings me to the question stated in the title of this post: Why ISN'T Hodges in the Hall?  What is the case against him?  He was passed over by the BBWA in regular Hall voting for all fifteen years of his eligibility.  He has been passed over (or "snubbed" as the Hodgesophiles would put it) by the various iterations of the Veteran's Committee ever since (although there is anecdotal evidence that Hodges was voted in by the Vet's Committee one year, only to have his entrance sabotaged by Ted Williams on a procedural technicality).  

Again, why?

Everyone makes the case FOR Hodges, but I am asking for someone now to make the case AGAINST him.  Can somebody please state the case as to why Hodges has never reached the Promised Land in Cooperstown?  I'd be interested in hearing the other side of this. Please state the case, and please be civil.

Oh, and a couple of points of my own.  When making their arguments, the Hodges Backers always include as reasons (a) that Gil was a nice guy, the salt of the earth, and (b) that he managed the 1969 Mets to a World Series win.  To me, these are NOT reasons to put him in the HOF.  We all know that "nice" doesn't get you in the Hall, witness Ty Cobb and Steve Carlton, to name only two, and if "nice" was a criterion, then Mike McKenry would be a first ballot entrant..  As for managing the '69 Mets, that would make a nice footnote on his HOF plaque, but there are a lots and lots of managers who have won one World Series.

As I always do, I will be copying this post on several Facebook pages, and I am looking forward to the responses.  

A Very Tired Hall of Fame Debate

The old Put-Gil-Hodges-in-the-Hall-of-Fame Debate has been raging in recent days on the SABR-L listserv. This is a debate that should be packed away with all of the batting practice baseballs and never be discussed again. It rekindles ONLY because of the New York-centric influence among many baseball writers, and ONLY because Hodges played on one of baseball's iconic teams, the Boys of Summer Era Brooklyn Dodgers. Oh, and Hodges also managed the New York Mets when they won their improbable World Series championship in 1969. I grant you that that was no small feat, but there are a lot of managers who have won one World Series, so that in and of itself does not make you Hall of Fame worthy.

But back to Gil Hodges the player. Here are his stats over 18 seasons and 2,071 games:

HR 370
RBI 1,274
BA .273
OPS .846

Now, consider these stats of a player who played in relatively the same era as Hodges, only fewer season, 14, and games, 1,841:

HR 364
RBI 1,159
BA .266
OPS .848

The player in question? Rocky Colovito. How many people are on the bandwagon pushing for HIM to get into the Hall of Fame?

By the way, I take no credit for coming up with the Colovito comparison. One of the posters on SABR-L did that. There are as many people debating against Hodges for the Hall as there are for him. My point is, why even argue it at all?