1 Happy St

1 Happy St would like to congratulate Rickey Henderson on his induction to the HOF. With a little help from Ryne Sandberg, Brian has written Rickey's speech:

RICKEY: What a beautiful day this is. Rickey stands here today before you humbled and a grateful baseball player. Rickey is truly honored and in awe, honored to be in the class with his fellow inductee Jim Rice. And as Rickey looks behind him here, wow, at the greatest players in the history of the game, Rickey is in awe. Rickey knows that if he had ever allowed himself to think this was possible, if Rickey had ever taken one day in pro ball for granted, he's sure he would not be here today. This will come as a shock, but Rickey is almost speechless.

The reason Rickey is here, they tell him, is that he played the game a certain way, that he played the game the way it was supposed to be played. Rickey doesn't know about that, but Rickey does know this: he had too much respect for the game to play it any other way, and if there was a single reason he is here today, it is because of one word, respect. Rickey loves to play baseball. He's a baseball player. He's always been a baseball player. He's still a baseball player. That's who he is.

CROWD: We love you, Rickey!

RICKEY: He loves you too. He was a baseball player when he was ten or twelve years old pretending to be Willie Stargell or Johnny Bench or Luis Tiant, when his bat was an old fungo, his ball was a plastic golf ball, when the field was the street. He was a baseball player at Oakland Technical High School. Even though he was an All-American running back and received two dozen scholarships to play football in college, he turned them down. Then he was signed by the Oakland A's in the 4th round of the 1976 draft. Rickey had too much respect for the game to leave it behind or to make it his second or third sport in college.

Everything he is today, everything he has today, everything he will ever be is because of the game of baseball, not the game you see on TV or in movies, baseball, the one we all know, in dirt fields and in alleys. We all know that game. The game fit Rickey because it was right.

It was all about doing things right. If you played the game the right way, played the game for the team, good things would happen. That's what Rickey loved most about the game, how a ground out to second with a man on second and nobody out was a great thing.

Respect.

Thank you, and go Rickey!

Baseball's all-time hit king, Pete Rose, admitted yesterday on the Dan Patrick ESPN Radio program that he bet on the his team "every night" while managing the Cincinnati Reds. "I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team," Rose said. "I did everything in my power every night to win that game."

It's too early to tell how this will affect his chances at induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame but its fair to say that Rose is now a shoe-in to be inducted into the Bad Gamblers' Hall of Fame.

I wrote a rather lengthy (by our standards) entry last Thursday about which players I would vote for if I was a member of the BBWAA and I was given a Hall of Fame ballot. The whole thing was written in jest partly because I know I’ll never be allowed to vote for something like that, and also because I was trying to be funny. But on Monday, I read a column from Paul Ladewski, who is an actual member of the BBWAA. His column focused on his reasoning for who he voted for, and by all accounts, it was not in jest.

(Click here for the article).

Who did he vote for, you ask? Nobody. He turned in his ballot and it was completely blank. Remember, this guy’s vote counted, meaning baseball players who are currently eligible for the Hall of Fame were directly affected by his vote, and he voted for nobody. If I was Cal Ripken Jr. or Tony Gwynn, I’d be pissed. Better yet, if I was a fringe HOF’er who was counting on every vote possible, I’d try to find this guy. Anyway, here are his 3 reasons (as well as my responses to how insane they are) for handing in a blank ballot.

"I don't have nearly enough information [about who took steroids] to make a value judgment of this magnitude."

In other words, Paul is a journalist who gets paid to make value judgments based on information he has gathered to make said judgment, but admittedly, he’s not very good at his job.

"Let's suppose a player is voted into the Hall of Fame, then a short time later, a former teammate steps forward to Canseco him. And another. What to do then? Keep him there? Take him out? Drape black crepe over his plaque?"

Using this logic, Paul probably shouldn't have a job because a few years ago, one of his colleagues from the Chicago Tribune was charged with statutory rape and subsequently fired from his job. How do we know that one day in the future, we won't find out the same thing about Paul?

"Walter Johnson, Cy Young and Honus Wagner didn't receive
[unanimous selections]. Neither did Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. In fact, nobody has in the history of the game."

In other words, the people who vote for this thing have been doing it wrong for 70 years, so why stop now?

Paul Ladewski is a pompous jackass!

Every year, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) gets to vote for Hall of Fame inductees. Prior to the voting, you’ll always hear from members of the BBWAA telling us who they will be voting for and who they won’t be voting for and why. It’s a big joke really since the criteria for getting voted seems to change every year. But this year, the main discussion has been whether or not Mark McGwire will get elected since he allegedly took steroids and we can’t have someone like that associated with the HOF and voting for him sends the wrong message to kids and we need to teach someone a lesson and who better to teach a lesson to than this guy and blah blah blah nonsense nonsense.

It’s enough to make your head spin really because one, he’s never been proven to have actually taken steroids. Two, the banning of steroids wasn’t enforced by the league until after he retired. And three, even if he did take steroids, who are we to get all high and mighty about it after the fact when we didn’t seem to care at the time he played? Regardless, there will probably be enough people who vote for this thing who will in fact get all high and mighty about it and keep him out. But I wouldn’t. I’d vote him in and give him his own wing at the museum. I’d call it “The Steroids Wing”. Who wouldn’t want to check that out? The only problem with the steroids wing is that the plaques with the heads of the players on it would have to be twice as big, and that could cause budget concerns in the future.

But here are a few other fringe HOF’ers that I’d vote for and why:

Dave Concepcion: He didn’t do anything particularly worthy when you look at his overall statistics, but there’s an old Topps baseball card of his from the 70’s where he’s wearing a generic red hat with no logo on it (kind of like something you’d see in a Frosted Flakes commercial). Actually, it was more pink than red which leads me to believe that there was a guy working at Topps at the time the card was manufactured who made it like that as a joke, but then never fixed it and it got shipped out like that. Regardless, any guy with a baseball card that cheesy definitely gets my vote.

Andre Dawson: His nickname was "The Hawk" even though he was about as graceful as a drunk 3-legged horse. He’d get my vote, then I’d have a continuous video at the museum showing him chasing after doubles in the right-field corner and legging out slow-rolling grounders during his Cubs days.

Jack Morris: Another guy who probably didn’t do enough statistically, but he made up for it in cheesy facial hair. Are you seeing the pattern here folks? Cheesy equals vote from me.

And finally Pete Rose: He could quite possibly be the only guy in history to get booed during his acceptance speech. We have the opportunity to make it happen, but we’re letting it slip away.