Baseball players’ careers are defined by numbers. Once those players have been retired for five years, the most important number becomes 75. That’s the percentage of ballots on which a player must be named to gain election to the Hall of Fame. And since intrigue surrounding elections is another national pastime, we conducted our own exit poll. Nine Tribune writers cast Hall of Fame ballots this year. Based on the 75 percent standard, a player would need to be named on seven to gain enshrinement. If the Tribune voters reflect national sentiment, here’s who will be elected: Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken Jr., Rich Gossage and Andre Dawson. Mark McGwire is also eligible, but perhaps you have heard of that clause about “integrity, sportsmanship [and] character.” The only voting irregularities reported were . . . well, we’ll let you decide for yourself.
Phil Rogers
ROGERS’ PICKS:
Harold Baines
Bert Blyleven
Andre Dawson
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Jack Morris
Jim Rice
Cal Ripken Jr.
Alan Trammell
One guy limped away from the game, bitter and beaten when he was released at 36. Another worked through repeated knee surgeries and daily pain to last until 42, helping three teams to the playoffs beyond the age when the other guy said enough.
It’s funny how things work. I didn’t think I was going to vote for Harold Baines until I took a fresh look at Jim Rice, the highest vote-getter I previously hadn’t voted for.
Thinking I might be wrong on Rice made me appreciate just how wrong it would be to vote for him but not for Baines. Both these guys could really, really hit.
Among the commonly used career totals, Rice topped Baines only in average (.298-.289), slugging percentage (.502-.465), triples (79-49) and stolen bases (58-34). Baines, who played 741 more games, barely beat Rice in homers (384-382) but also just barely edged him in strikeouts (1,441-1,423).
While 3,000 hits is considered the automatic standard for the Hall, Baines’ 2,866 hits will become the most of any eligible player not in the Hall (currently it’s Andre Dawson, at 2,774).
Because he was one-dimensional as a designated hitter for the second half of his career, Baines is a borderline choice as a Hall of Famer. What gets him over the hump, in my opinion, is a .324 batting average and .888 on-base plus slugging percentage in 31 postseason games for four different teams, including White Sox appearances on both ends of his career, in 1983 and 2000.
Rice, a .225 hitter in 18 playoff games, doesn’t get the tiebreaker, though he was better in October than the average suggests. I am voting for him this year, but not with the same conviction that I will for some other annual also-rans.
Also on my ballot: Dawson, Bert Blyleven, Goose Goosage, Tony Gwynn, Jack Morris, Cal Ripken Jr. and Alan Trammell.
No, I didn’t vote for Mark McGwire. I would have if not for the New York Daily News linking him to steroids as far back as 1993-94 and those non-denials before Congress.
Still, here’s an amazing fact about McGwire’s career. He never had more than 28 doubles in a season. The other 23 hitters on this year’s ballot combined for 123 30-double seasons, including 10 by Ripken and nine apiece by Albert Belle, Dante Bichette and Don Mattingly.
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Phil Rogers is the Tribune’s national baseball reporter.
Paul Sullivan
SULLIVAN’S PICKS:
Harold Baines
Andre Dawson
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Cal Ripken Jr.
Lee Smith
I can picture Mark McGwire sitting back in his comfortable chair, yelling obscenities at his TV while watching the San Diego Chargers in the playoffs.
Despite a four-game suspension this fall for violating the NFL’s substance-abuse policy, Chargers defensive star Shawne Merriman will be wreaking havoc on the field this January, possibly on his way to Super Bowl glory. McGwire, meanwhile, will have been denied entrance to the Hall of Fame for suspicion of using performance-enhancing drugs late in his career.
For some reason, the morals police don’t treat the Merrimans with the same contempt they reserve for guys like McGwire and Barry Bonds. No one said life is fair.
I won’t be casting a vote for McGwire–I considered him a one-trick pony who didn’t become a Hall of Fame-caliber player until he began bulking up. Think Dave Kingman. Bonds was a surefire Hall of Famer before he tried to be like McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and he probably blew it as well.
As for my picks, I went with the two obvious choices–Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr.–along with Goose Gossage, Andre Dawson, Lee Smith and Harold Baines.
There’s no debate over Gwynn and Ripken, and I’ve argued forever that relievers like Gossage and Smith don’t get their due because the voters are about 20 years behind the times in recognizing the importance of closers. Dawson’s eight Gold Gloves and 438 home runs probably will get overlooked again, but I’m confident one day he will be elected.
Baines is a borderline pick, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t fare well in his first year on the ballot. All Baines did was hit and drive in runs–1,628, to be exact, ranking 23rd on the career list.
He is a sentimental choice, to be sure, but there’s still a place for sentiment on this voter’s ballot.
Paul Sullivan covers baseball for the Tribune.
Bob Verdi
VERDI’S PICKS:
Andre Dawson
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Jim Rice
Cal Ripken Jr.
Lee Smith
Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn deserve better than to have their Hall of Fame moments coincide with the debate about performance-enhancing substances, but these two icons soon will separate themselves from the pack again, as they did when they were active players.
Ripken and Gwynn will be voted into Cooperstown on the first ballot, while Mark McGwire winds up on the outside looking in. He’ll have other chances. He can wait. He should wait. He’s kept everybody else, including Congress, waiting for a straight answer.
More importantly, it is time to honor several stars who are way overdue. Relief pitchers, for some strange reason, receive only grudging respect. Bruce Sutter finally made it last year on his 13th trip–no assurance that Lee Smith and Goose Gossage will reap the necessary votes they deserve this year. People with short memories forget that Gossage didn’t close out games by pitching to only one or two batters. He worked multiple innings. Smith logged 478 saves, often saving the Cubs from themselves.
Andre Dawson absolutely belongs, as does Jim Rice, and if you argue that Bert Blyleven, Jack Morris and Tommy John posted numbers exceeding those of certain starting pitchers already in bronze, you would not be wrong.
But my votes went to Ripken, Gwynn, Gossage, Smith, Dawson and Rice.
As for McGwire, he is only a suspect in baseball’s steroid culture, but his silence is troubling. If he did it–if–all he had to do was say I’m sorry. Had Richard Nixon tried that, we might have been mourning Gerald Ford as a fine man but not as a former president of the United States.
Bob Verdi is a former In the Wake of the News columnist.
Fred Mitchell
MITCHELL’S PICKS:
Harold Baines
Bert Blyleven
Andre Dawson
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Tommy John
Jack Morris
Dave Parker
Cal Ripken Jr.
Lee Smith
While Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn appear to be locks, I took full advantage of my 10 Hall of Fame votes to give props as well to eight other players with extraordinary credentials.
Andre Dawson, Lee Smith and Rich Gossage, all of whom spent some time with the Cubs, received my votes once again.
Dawson’s all-around performances as a power hitter, exceptional baserunner, Gold Glove outfielder and dependable team leader make him one of my choices every year.
Smith toiled in the big leagues for 18 seasons and became the all-time saves leader in 1993. He retired in 1997 with 478 saves, which stood as the record until Trevor Hoffman eclipsed it last season.
Gossage intimidated hitters for years and achieved several milestone marks, such as 124 victories and 310 saves, along the way.
Harold Baines, who spent most of his career with the White Sox, quietly racked up some impressive offensive numbers as an outfielder and designated hitter while comporting himself in a professional manner.
I think of right-handers Bert Blyleven, a 287-game winner, and Jack Morris (254) in the same sentence–durable, efficient and impressive. The same goes for lefty Tommy John (288, 3.34 ERA), whose remarkable comeback from an elbow injury gave birth to the surgical procedure that now bears his name.
A Gold Glove outfielder, Dave Parker was the 1978 NL Most Valuable Player. He had a .290 career batting average and 339 homers.
Ripken could very well become the first unanimous choice. He played 2,632 consecutive games, a streak that included a stretch of 8,243 straight innings from 1982-87, in 21 seasons with the Orioles.
Gwynn was one of the game’s greatest contact hitters. The Gold Glove outfielder played his entire 20-year career with San Diego, compiling a .338 batting average with 3,141 hits. His career-high .394 average in 1994 is the highest in the majors in the 65 years since Ted Williams was the last player to bat above .400.
Slugger Mark McGwire does not yet pass the smell test for me as Major League Baseball attempts to sort through its steroid-era debris.
Fred Mitchell is a Tribune staff reporter.
Dan McGrath
McGRATH’S PICKS:
Andre Dawson
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Jim Rice
Cal Ripken Jr.
I’ve never bought into the argument that only the best of the best merit first-ballot selection to the Hall of Fame. In my mind, a player either is a Hall of Famer or he isn’t, and making him wait past his first year of eligibility serves no purpose. It’s not like he’s going to beef up his statistics.
Unless that player is Mark McGwire. I didn’t vote for him this year, his first on the ballot. His accomplishments suggest he’s deserving, but until we have a better sense of the role chemicals played in those accomplishments, I will withhold judgment.
I believe enough people will vote for McGwire to keep him on the ballot while the record-keepers sort out the steroid mess and devise standards that can be applied to the usual suspects (Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro) as well as McGwire.
Barry Bonds? He’s in when his time comes, no matter the source of all that late-career power. The Barry Bonds of the ’90s was baseball’s best player, Hall of Fame-worthy long before that extra milkshake at the training table turned him into an ebony-toned Michelin Man.
My ballot consists of three holdovers and two first-timers: hitting machine Tony Gwynn and ironman Cal Ripken Jr., who, given what he represents as a baseball statesman, might be the first unanimous pick.
Andre Dawson, I believe, was the best player in the game for nearly a decade, until Montreal’s wretched AstroTurf ravaged his knees and diminished his skills, and Jim Rice was the most feared right-handed hitter of his era.
Rich Gossage also gets the call, with a nudge from Roland Hemond and on a variation of the “Same Guy” Rule: If Bruce Sutter is in . . . maybe Lee Smith should be as well. He had more saves than either of them. Some, though, were attributable to longevity. And I never ascribed the same lights-out dominance to Lee Arthur as I did Gossage, Sutter and Dennis Eckersley.
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I will join in the applause if my fellow voters select Jack Morris (best big-game pitcher of his era) and Bert Blyleven (about a million strikeouts and 60 shutouts!) But neither ever won a Cy Young Award, and I believe a Hall of Famer has to have at least one year when he was the best of the best.
Finally, I would join my Tribune colleagues in support of Harold Baines if they would join me in backing Chili Davis–Same Guy Rule–only Chili has come and gone from the ballot.
Dan McGrath is the Tribune’s associate managing editor for sports.
Mike Downey
DOWNEY’S PICKS:
Harold Baines
Andre Dawson
Tony Gwynn
Mark McGwire
Cal Ripken Jr.
Right off the bat, let me note that I voted for no pitchers–not a one.
I am not as persuaded of Rich “Goose” Gossage’s qualifications for immortality as others clearly are. If you vote for him, you also should vote for Lee Smith. Just as if you vote for Bert Blyleven, you should vote for Tommy John.
There has to be a cutoff line somewhere.
I did vote for five batsmen, beginning with Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr., who are a couple of no-doubt-about-its.
Andre Dawson, yes. A totally underpublicized, under-recognized star.
Harold Baines, yes. I thought it over, crunched the numbers, considered it from all angles–is a designated hitter as deserving as a man who fields a position?–and concluded Baines was a worthy nominee (and then some).
If a Bruce Sutter can become a Hall of Famer by pitching a couple of innings every couple of days, why not a DH?
Finally, controversially, we come to Mark McGwire.
Yes, in the end, I indeed did give him my vote.
Seventh-greatest homer clubber of all time, McGwire’s power numbers are too mighty to ignore. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Suspected is not convicted. If it were, you wouldn’t vote Lance Armstrong any awards either.
Mike Downey writes In the Wake of the News.
Mark Gonzales
GONZALES’ PICKS:
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Jim Rice
Cal Ripken Jr.
Sometime Sunday, I will walk past Mark McGwire Way on the University of Southern California campus. But that’s as close as I’ll come to acknowledging the achievements of the beleaguered slugger.
Quite simply, I echo the comments made earlier by Hall of Fame member Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News, who said he isn’t interested in considering McGwire’s past if McGwire isn’t willing to talk about it.
I’m not completely closing the door on McGwire, but he could have cleared the slate in March 2005 by telling a group of obnoxious politicians whether or not he had taken performance-enhancing drugs.
Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn played the game with pride and distinction. They dominated their era while never changing their uniforms and represented their teams and communities with a large degree of pride. These were no-brainer decisions.
I never covered Jim Rice, but I saw enough of his games to recognize what a dominant hitter he was. The sight of him hitting a ball out of the Oakland Coliseum on two bounces during batting practice in 1978 was just a sampling of his strength and intimidation.
Rich “Goose” Gossage intimidated and dominated for more than one inning per outing. I would like to have seen what he could have done in this era of increasing specialization. But his credentials are plenty for me.
Mark Gonzales covers baseball for the Tribune.
Dave van Dyck
VAN DYCK’S PICKS:
Harold Baines
Andre Dawson
Tommy John
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Cal Ripken Jr.
Lee Smith
Voting for the Hall of Fame , as serious a task as any writer can have, is never easy. But this year is the worst with the inclusion of Mark McGwire, the supposedly tainted slugger.
How to handle it? The answer: Delay. And hope enough other voters will give him the 5 percent necessary to stay on the ballot. Another year or two, maybe three, will give a clearer picture of who did what. Maybe not. Maybe decision day will come and then it would be hard to vote against a player (by not voting for him) based on innuendo only.
So here is one man’s vote, with sincere apologies to Jim Rice, Steve Garvey, Dave Concepcion, Jack Morris, Bert Blyleven and Pete Rose (who got our write-in vote for 15 years):
Harold Baines: This is his first year and, in the first real test case, an interesting referendum on whether voters hold being a full-time DH against a player. Baines was a marvelous player, the best DH of his time.
Andre Dawson: You almost had to see Dawson in person to appreciate him as a player and a person, and what he meant to a team in both categories. His MVP season for the Cubs was one of the best in any city.
Tommy John: Remember, John won 288 games and spent part of his career (actually, careers) as a reliever. He should be included in the Hall if for no other reason than his historic elbow-ligament replacement operation, now known as Tommy John surgery.
Goose Gossage: How could Bruce Sutter have been voted in before Gossage? The consummate closer, the most feared man in baseball.
Lee Smith: Gossage should be in before him, but Smith belongs just because of his sheer numbers–478 saves.
Tony Gwynn: Gwynn was one of the nicest, most humble ballplayers ever. He just happened to be a superstar as well.
Cal Ripken Jr.: They can say what they want about the McGwire/Sosa home run battle bringing baseball back from the brink caused by the 1994 strike. Sorry, it was Ripken, who gave the nation a warm feeling about its pastime that emotional night in Baltimore when he broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games record.
Dave van Dyck covers baseball for the Tribune.
Philip Hersh
HERSH’S PICKS:
Rich Gossage
Tony Gwynn
Don Mattingly
Jim Rice
Cal Ripken Jr.
Lee Smith
Alan Trammell
Could it be that enough of us with baseball Hall of Fame votes will acknowledge Mark McGwire’s career as a steroidal sham and eliminate him from consideration once and for all?
That is what I hoped when I left McGwire’s name unchecked on a 2007 ballot that included seven players I deemed worthy of Cooperstown. If 95 percent of my colleagues agree, McGwire’s name will not reappear.
As long as I have a vote, it never will include McGwire, whose silence before Congress was even more damning than the allegations in Jose Canseco’s book and the bottle of androstenedione–a steroid in a supplement–that sharp-eyed Associated Press reporter Steve Wilstein spotted in Big Mac’s locker.
My disdain for the statistical records of Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro is similar, and I still do not know what to do with Roger Clemens when he becomes eligible.
Those I included: two slam dunks, Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr.; two of the three relief pitchers I have lobbied for over the last three years, Goose Gossage and Lee Smith (the third, Bruce Sutter, made it last year); Don Mattingly, perhaps the best hitting-fielding combo in a first baseman (.307 average, nine Gold Gloves) of the last quarter-century; and Alan Trammell, a frequent Gold Glover at shortstop who hit for average and occasional power.
And, with a bow to the achievements of sluggers who likely were not using steroids, my first vote for Jim Rice, who hit more than 40 homers just once but between 20 and 40–when those were respected numbers–15 times.
I know, as my colleague Mike Downey pointed out convincingly, that Andre Dawson’s record looks as good as Rice’s, except for career batting average. That’s a point I will weigh seriously next year.
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For now, the point is to stick it to McGwire.
Philip Hersh covered baseball for the Baltimore Evening Sun, Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times.