BBWAA | The Baseball Zealot

Hall of Fame election tidbits

The baseball bloggers of the SB Nation affiliates held their own Hall of Fame balloting and the results are in. If they were in charge, only one player would get in and that player was a bit of a surprise… Bert Blyleven.

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve been a Blyleven supporter for years. I just would have expected more support for Alomar or Larkin. My guess is that there was a bit of the “not getting in the first year” element factoring in.

There’s a shared document which has a list of 50 or so (and growing) BBWAA writers and their publicly announced Hall of Fame ballots.

It’s a small sample size of course but I’m heartened to see a good portion of votes going to Andre Dawson (at this moment out of 53 listed, 41 are supporting his induction).

Maybe it’s me but it seems like there’s a bigger push for Edgar Martinez among a few for the Hall.

More support for Dawson from Hal Bodley, senior correspondent for mlb.com who goes on to say that he thinks that this will be (or maybe more accurately “should be”) the year for Dawson and Blyleven. His ballot: Dawson, Blyleven, Alomar and Jack Morris.

and it wouldn’t be Hall of Fame ballot time unless a writer wasn’t defending his ballot, right. Only it seems now they’re doing earlier and earlier before the official announcement.

Andre Dawson: In or out?

The Chicago Tribune has announced who their seven major sports writers support for the 2010 baseball Hall of Fame ballot. Aggregately, the seven of them would vote in Roberto Alomar and Andre Dawson.

Dawson has always been on the bubble when it came to the Hall. It didn’t help that he had 438 homeruns short of the (what used to be) the magical number to get in, (whether or not you like that litmus test. I don’t) It also doesn’t help that he played for a team that doesn’t exist anymore and another that for the most part was mediocre (Dawson did his part winning the MVP for the last place 1987 Cubs).

Hopefully, this is his year. If you really want to see him in the Hall, you can help push for his election by joining Cubcast’s Twitter blitz aptly named #Dawson4theHall. More info on their website.

Dawson may have an uphill battle, though. Seems to me that the BBWAA is becoming more selective in recent years, with the possible exception of Bruce Sutter (sorry Sutter fans, I liked him too).

But mostly in the ‘00s, they’ve only voted in the creme de la creme, something the Veterans Committee should perhaps look into. In 2009, it was Rice (long time comin’) and Henderson (shoo-in). In 2008, Gossage. In 2007, two obvious choices in Ripken and Gwynn. Others in this decade: Boggs, Sandberg, Eckersley, G. Carter, Eddie Murray, Ozzie Smith. Kirby Puckett.

Ok, there WAS Mazeroski. *snicker*

As far as his legacy is concerned, Dawson can be thankful he was picked up by the Chicago Cubs in 1987 after playing eleven years with the now defunct Montreal Expos . He was 32 years old and played only six years for Chicago but recently the Cub faithful have really taken up his cause for the Hall with a vengeance. See the above Twitter effort as an example.

Point is, as much as I like Dawson (and I do, being a Cub fan. Besides being a good player, he had a pretty cool WGN theme song based around him), it might be a tough row to hoe.

PS I couldn’t think of it at the time but the song was “Andre’s Army”.

Bringing Rickey down a notch

Corky Simpson, former writer for the Tucson Citizen and voting member of BBWAA is making news for his Hall of Fame ballot. Who he voted for… and more importantly, who he didn’t vote for.

Matt Williams is on his ballot. So is Alan Trammell and Don Mattingly.

…but no Rickey Henderson.

And that’s got bloggers, baseball pundits and baseball fans in general up in arms.

You can read Simpson’s full ballot and his reasoning at his current paper, the Green Valley News and Sun (which still gives him BBWAA voting rights).

His picks:

Bert Blyleven
Andre Dawson
Tommy John
Don Mattingly
Tim Raines
Jim Rice
Alan Trammell
Matt Williams

I admit, his ballot selection seems a bit inconsistent. He’s voted for Tim Raines but not Rickey Henderson. He’s voted for Matt Williams but not Mark McGwire (if you’re thinking not McGwire because of PEDs, keep in mind Williams was listed in the Mitchell report).

I don’t agree at all with Simpson’s ballot but I’m not getting bent out of shape because of it. On the other hand, if Rickey Henderson got into the Hall of Fame unanimously while players like Hank Aaron and Cal Ripken did not, now THAT would be something to write about.

BBWAA: The path to becoming relevant

The BBWAA is slowly dragging themselves into relevance.

Today, they added four writers whose contributions can be found mainly on the Internet. Congratulations go out to Will Carroll and Kristina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus and Rob Neyer and Keith Law of ESPN.com.

This is big. Yes, it was a long time coming and it’s not enough but it’s a slow recognition that ~~many~~ most sports fans are getting their sports news from the web whether it be from a brick and mortar newspaper’s web presence or from a new fangly web site out there. It’s time the BBWAA started to recognize that.

Now maybe the BBWAA can do something about their god awful looking web site.