fred klein on sports

                Electors for the Baseball Hall of Fame can choose up to 10 recently active players for induction out of the 35 or so on our ballots, but in my 17 years of voting I can’t recall choosing more than seven in any one year. Keeping in mind that the Hall is for the greats, not the very goods, helps me focus in that regard.

This year, though, I’ll be picking 10, and my problem hasn’t been who to add but whom not to. It’s the richest candidate list in memory and could yield as many as four inductees, although the requirement that a player be named by 75% of the voters is a steep one.

It’s been a while—since 1991—that as many as three players were elected in the same year by the current or ex sportswriters, and in some years the number has been zero. That happened last year, and we scribes were castigated for spoiling the July induction party in Cooperstown, New York, where the Hall is situated.

 The affair went on as scheduled, and hung three new plaques by vote of one of the veterans’ committees that also decide such things, but the fact that the inductees (umpire Hank O’Day, team owner Jacob Ruppert and 19^th-century catcher James “Deacon” White) had been dead a total of 226 years put a bit of a damper on the proceedings. Why the Hall continues to induct players no living person has seen perform is something I can’t understand.

We’ve all seen this year’s ballot first timers, and a great group it is. Heading it are two-thirds of the best baseball-playing golf threesome ever—Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. (The third was John Smoltz, who’ll be up for election next year.) Another newcomer is Frank Thomas, the Chicago White Sox’s all-time best hitter save for Shoeless Joe. I’ll be voting enthusiastically for all three.

Maddux and Glavine anchored the pitching staff that made the Atlanta Braves the National League’s best team in the 1990s, albeit one that won only a single World Series, in 1995. Pitching these days is dominated by 6-foot-6 types who can throw a strawberry through a battleship, but Maddux and Glavine are especially praiseworthy in my book because they’re ordinary-sized guys who got by on skill and guile. Maddux is a sure bet to get in—his 355 career wins are eighth-most all-time and his 3,371 strikeouts rank 10^th—but Glavine’s 305 wins weren’t far behind in that most-important category. Between them they won six Cy Young Awards (Maddux had four, Glavine two) and further distinguished themselves with bat (Glavine) and glove (Maddux). Both also are (or were) near-scratch golfers, and I hope they’ll be playing a celebratory round in Cooperstown on induction weekend.

Thomas is a longer shot to win election, partly because some voters are sniffy about designated hitters, which he was for part of his career, but his numbers are of Hall quality. His 521 home runs rank 18^th all-time, his 1,704 RBIs are 22^nd and his 1,667 walks are 10^th, and he won two American League MVP awards, in 1993 and ’94. His star would be brighter if his best year (1994) hadn’t been cut short by the strike that cancelled that year’s last six weeks and World Series and left the White Sox in first place in their division. The big fella was batting .353 with 38 home runs and 101 ribbies in that one, and his figures might have been monumental if the last 50 or so games had been played.

The other seven players I’m naming I’ve named before and see no reason not to again.  I’m rooting hardest for Jack Morris to win election because he’s in his 15^th and last year on the sportswriters’ ballot. Last year he fell just short with a 67.7% vote, and it wouldn’t take much more to put him over the top this time.

  It’s beyond me why Morris doesn’t have a plaque already. He was a horse of a starting pitcher, with 254 career victories and 175 complete games, and a big-game performer with few peers. He threw two complete-game World Series wins for the 1984 champion Detroit Tigers and went 2-0 for the Minnesota Twins in the 1991 event. His seventh-game, 10-inning shutout in that one, versus the Braves, capped the best Series I covered.

I’ll be voting for Craig Biggio, the former Houston Astros’ hero who topped the “magical” 3,000-hit mark (with 3,060) in 20 seasons, during which he played catcher and second base. I can’t think of another player who manned both those demanding positions ably. He got a 68.2% vote last year and also needs just a small boost to prevail.

I’m not sniffy about DHs and I’ll be voting for Edgar Martinez, the best ever in the slot. Baseball’s annual Outstanding Designated Hitter Award is named for him. I’ll check the box for Mike Piazza, the best-hitting catcher of his era; the relief pitcher Lee Smith, who ranks third in all-time saves; Alan Trammell, a fine shortstop over a 20-year career; and the pitcher Curt Schilling, who topped the career 3,000-strikeouts mark and whose post-season record (11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in 19 starts) is second to none. That’s 10, isn’t it?

The ballot is so full I didn’t have room for a couple of players I otherwise might have favored. First-time nominee Mike Mussina had 270 pitching victories and a .638 winning percentage that’s sixth among starters with at least 250 victories. Tim Raines was a whirling Dervish on the bases and hit very well, too. Another time, maybe.

Once again I didn’t vote for three players whose otherwise-Hall-worthy careers have a chemical odor. Evidence shows that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa tainted their feats with steroids use, and while nobody is erasing their records, or demanding a refund of their enormous salaries, the Hall properly remains out of their reach, as their poor showings in their first ballot appearances last year showed (Clemens topped the three at 37.6%).

As I noted last year, in baseball there are two kinds of cheating. It’s one thing for a fielder who traps a fly ball to raise it in triumph as though he’d caught it, but quite another to cold-bloodedly ponder risks and rewards and choose to break the rules by juicing up, as Bonds, Clemens and Sosa apparently did. They’ve had their rewards and their bill is now due.