Grim News

First off, let me congratulate Andre Dawson on his election to the Hall of Fame.  It is a much deserved honor, and I’m glad to see that the BBWAA got it right, eventually.

One of the great things about baseball is that you can look through a mountain of statistics and still have arguments about who the greatest players of all time are.   I can imagine that there are a few baseball writers out there who think “Sure, Dawson was really good, but this isn’t the ‘Hall of Really Good’.  I can think of several other players in his era who were better.”

As much as I believe that Andre Dawson belongs in the Hall of Fame, I could understand that there might be an argument on the issue.

Maybe some writers think that only players who are in the discussion of “Best Player of All Time” belong in the hall?

I’m going to pick a list off the top of my head of the “generally considered” best baseball players who ever lived.  I’m going to include 5 hitters and 5 pitchers.

For hitters, how about…

• Ty Cobb
• Babe Ruth
• Hank Aaron
• Ted Williams
• Joe DiMaggio

I’d say that is a pretty good list of “Best Ever” candidates, wouldn’t you?  You have the former all-time hits leader, 2 former all-time home run leaders, the last man to hit .400, and a guy who hit in 56 straight games while winning a metric fuckton of World Series titles and was frequently introduced as “Baseball’s Greatest Living Player” (which is not even close to true at any given point in his life, see examples: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, etc) while banging Marilyn Monroe.

For pitchers?

• Walter Johnson
• Cy Young
• Grover Cleveland Alexander
• Christy Matthewson
• Warren Spahn

I don’t think there is any argument on any of these players, do you?  In a game where 300 wins is considered “automatic”, we have a 400 game winner, a 500 game winner, and 3 350 game winners.  All won World Series titles.  4 of the 5 were named to baseball’s “All Century Team”.

What do all of these men have in common?  Not one of them was a unanimous choice for selection to the Hall of Fame.

Somewhere out there, there was a sportswriter who thought “You know?  Babe Ruth was pretty good, but I’m just not sure he’s Hall of Fame material.”

Somewhere out there, there was a sportswriter who looked at Cy Young and said “Sure, he won 511 games, and they named the award for best pitcher in the league after the guy, but I’m not quite sure he can cut it on my Hall of Fame ballot.”

I think I know why there was a sportswriter or two who looked at Hank Aaron and said “Yeah, he’s the all-time Home Run champ, but I ain’t voting for him for Cooperstown.” and I hope those people are rotting in a special place in hell.

And lest you think that it’s the “old fogeys” who had it wrong, let’s take a look at a few “no-brainers” from recent years.  Again, just picking 5 off the top of my head…

• Cal Ripken Jr.
• Rickey Henderson
• Johnny Bench
• Nolan Ryan
• Ozzie Smith

Ok, we have “Mr. Ironman”, the all-time stolen base champ, the best catcher in the last 50 years, the all-time strikeouts leader, and the generally acknowledged best fielding shortstop of all time.  All were elected on the first ballot.  All received over 90% of the votes available… but not 100%.

In fact, there has not been one player in the history of baseball who was a unanimous selection for the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Really?  There’s not one guy out there who every voter could get behind?  Lou Gehrig?  Willie Mays?  Mickey Mantle?  Nobody?

What’s worse, is now some idiot is going to claim “tradition” when he refuses to vote for Randy Johnson, or Greg Maddux, or Pedro Martinez, or Ken Griffey Jr, or *Alex Rodriguez.  If Cy Young wasn’t unanimous, then how could Greg Maddux be voted in with 100% of the vote?  If Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron couldn’t draw every vote, how can you justify voting in Albert Pujols unanimously?

*A-Rod, with the steroid/HGH/PED thing might get a few nay-sayers who refuse to vote for anyone connected to that controversy, and I totally get that. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.

But here is the final straw for me…

I’m going to show the statistics for two players…

Player A:

• 15 year career
• 224 HR
• 1068 RBI
• .317 AVG

Player B:

• 18 year career
• 219 HR
• 1326 RBI
• .303 AVG

Neither player has won an MVP.  Player A has never led his league in any of the above offensive categories.  Player B has led the league in RBI and batting average once. (same year… guy wins 2/3 of the Triple Crown and didn’t win the MVP that year.)

One of these players is generally considered by sports writers to be a “No brainer, sure fire, first ballot, no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famer”  the other was dropped from the ballot after only getting 4.3% of the vote in his first year of eligibility. (You have to get at least 5% to stay on the ballot from year to year.)

So which of these players is Derek Jeter and which one is Al Oliver?

(Answer:  Jeter is “Player A”)

After looking at all of the evidence, I am forced to conclude that sportswriters, particularly baseball writers, are a bunch of self-righteous, sanctimonious, self-important jerkoffs who let their own egos and sensibilities get in the way of any semblance of objectivity.

Seriously, has any political movement gone from “Majority Party” to “Clown Shoes” so quickly?

Here are some of the choicest tidbits from President Obama’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

• “Dick Cheney was supposed to be here, but he is very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled, ‘How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.’”

• On House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), whose apparent fake tan has long been the butt of jokes inside the Beltway,  “We have a lot in common: He is a person of color,” Obama joked. “Although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

But the line of the night had to be this gem from Wanda Sykes on Rush Limbaugh…

• “I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight,”

The Republican Party has become a complete shambles.  When your party’s guiding lights are talk radio hosts, and some of your oldest and most established members are jumping ship to the other party, perhaps it is time to think about how disconnected you have become from “Mainstream America”.  Seriously, these clowns are seriously entertaining the notion of running Sarah Palin for President in 3 more years.  It might be more dignified, and certainly less expensive to just say “We give up” and let Obama have his second term without a fight.

As a parting shot, I’ll leave you with this little nugget to think about.  The same “Conservatives” who decry Obama’s spending bills and invoke the “holy name” of Ayn Rand when espousing their preferred economic philosophies are the same bozos who voted for Bush’s bailout bill back in December and managed to turn a budget surplus into record deficits in only a few short years.   Hypocrite much?

I used to love watching The Big Show on ESPN with Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick.  I liked the slightly skewed perspective that they brought to sports reporting, and I think every SportsCenter anchor since has been a pale shadow of these two.

That said, I was nonplussed when Olbermann threw his hat into the ring of political commentary.  What does he know about politics?  He’s a jock.  Gravitas ain’t in his lexicon…

Oops.

I don’t agree with every position he takes, but there are times when he gets it spot on.

To wit:

OJ Simpson… Guilty at last

13 years later, the freakshow is over.  OJ is going to jail, and unless I miss my guess, he’s not coming out unless it is in a coffin.  Unlike many folks, I do not take it as an article of faith that OJ killed his ex-wife and Ron Goldman.  My problem stems from the fact that this sellout has been acting like a jerk who got away with murder.  The confessional book “If I Did It“, “Juiced” and his attempts to “find the real killers” on nearly every golf course in the state of Florida scream of bad taste.  At least now, this jerk will not be in the public eye anymore.

Hope your knees are in good shape, Juice.  You’re going to be on them an awful lot.

How’s THAT for an original thought, eh?

I don’t know Lane Kiffin.  I don’t know Al Davis.  In fact, I don’t have strong feelings of any kind about anyone connected to the Oakland Raiders at all.  I do know this much.

If you’re going to fire someone, have the decency to keep the sordid details out of the press.  Calling a press conference in order to provide lurid details as to why you fired your coach is the kind of move that only the lowest of bottom-feeding scumsuckers would ever contemplate.  As if the court of public opinion means anything when you have to prove to the league (if not the courts… stay tuned) that you “had cause” to fire a coach who won only 25% of the games that he has coached.

You needed a reason to fire Kiffin?  Really?!?  “Sucking” wasn’t good enough?

As for the “details” that Davis provided, only the most naive or gullible fan of professional football would be inclined to take Al Davis at his word.  The same Al Davis who extorted the fans of Oakland only to move the team to Los Angeles, whom he tried to extort again a few years later.  The same Al Davis who brought the concept of “Personal Seat Licenses” into the NFL?  The same Al Davis who made more money suing the NFL than he did from being part of it?

We’re supposed to believe him over a football coach who wanted nothing more than to finish the season or have the balance of his contact paid off despite knowing that he would be canned any day now?

If Roger Goodell can suspend players for bad behavior and unethical conduct, why can’t he get rid of an owner that has done more to embarass the NFL over the last 40 years than he has to encourage it’s growth?