Letters to the Editor
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Pete Rose?
King,
Great points about Marvin Miller. Since I grew up right across the border from Detroit I *do* know John Fetzer, and when you mentioned that he outpolled Miller I did a double take. I mean seriously, other than simply being an owner (and not one the fans of Detroit remember fondly), the guy was a big fat ZERO. What an insult to Marvin Miller - that he wasn't voted in at all, and that not only was he outranked by such lightweights as Kuhn and Fetzer, but that they were even *considered* in the same vote as him.
But I couldn't let your fleeting mention of Pete Rose go unmentioned. The HoF is not worse off because Rose isn't in. He is entirely responsible for his exclusion; there is one rule that is important enough to be posted in locker rooms around MLB, and it's the prohibition on gambling (along with the penalty). Worse, Rose has done nothing (or worse than nothing) to rehabilitate himself since.
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Jumped 2 basketballs & a cinder block
...but racked myself on the sissy bar after crash landing. My 15 minutes of Knievelesque fame.
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Evel
Fitting tribute to Evel Knievel. I, and most of my friends, spent the same days as you flying off of unstable plywood ramps over various and sundry building supplies. The only things we managed to break were bike parts, a few noses, and a couple of fingers, well those and our dreams of being a worthy successor to Evel. When I heard the news, I touched wood and then looked over some of the scars acquired 30 years ago. While those scars are all but invisible, the memories will last forever.
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Evel
The headline in the Philadelphia Daily News on his death read: "What Took Him So Long?" I didn't know whether to chuckle or be offended. I kind of did both.
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Right About Miller and Kuhn, Wrong About Bonds
You're 100% correct in your assessment of Miller and Kuhn's relative claims to be in the Hall (and of the receding relevance of the Hall of Fame part of what remains the best sports-related museum I've ever visited).
But you're wrong about this:
That room keeps getting less and less interesting. It's missing Pete Rose and Buck O'Neil, and in a few years it'll start being notably absent some deserving players who happened to be among the few who either got caught taking or were widely assumed to have taken steroids, thus depriving them of the chance to join the various and sundry users already honored, not to mention scoundrels like Tom Yawkey and Ty Cobb.
Those (more than a few) who used steroids after 1991 were violating the rules of baseball. Cheaters don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. It's not a question of character (Yawkey and Cobb were certainly scoundrels) but of playing by the rules. And if you cheat, no matter how talented you otherwise are, you don't deserve to be in the Hall. Rose is a slightly different case, because the rule he violated is slightly more removed from actual game play. But only slightly. Gambling on baseball can affect the way games are played; that's why it's against the rules. Rose shouldn't be in, either, IMO.
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Eulogies
Have never been my strong suit so I guess I'm the one who has to point out that in Evel's biggest moment, the Canyon jump, he wet his pants and pulled the parachute trigger about 2 seconds after launch.
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Cheating
Cheating should keep you out of the hall of fame? Does the same hold true for every sport? Does this mean Bellicheck and the current crop of Patriots players should forever be kept out of Canton? If not, where's the line?
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Translation Of Lynx
God, that game last night was pure hell for us Patriot haters.
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Wes
Actually, I didn't watch the game and haven't checked the score yet. I have no idea what happened.
I'm asking why cheating seems like such a big deal to some people in those situations (gambling, steroids) but not in others, like what the Pats did. Rose said he never bet on games he was a part of, how does that affect the game? Steroids seem like they'd help a player, but there really haven't been any studies that show that steroids actually improve baseball performance. Reasonable arguments can be made that these violations were just breaking technicalities without any real effect on the game. That's the same argument Bellicheck Worshippers have been making.
I want to know why the former are cause for exclusion and the latter is not.
You, naturally, missed the point. Par for the course for you. You have no arguments, you have hyperbole, you have invective. Try actually making a point instead of misinterpreting what I say as an attempt at discrediting it. That's so Rove of you. Or do you prefer Limbaugh?
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The axis of Evel!
I built my ramp in 1974. It was the coolest. The first jump, I broke may arm so badly, that it is still a little crooked to this day. It's like my living tribute to the greatest daredevil ever. I wonder if anybody tried to sue ol' Evel for causing kids to do stupid stuff?
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The Hall and the Plaques, etc.
I visited the NBHOFAM this fall for the first time. Wonderful place, but as King says, the plaques farm is probably underwhelming for most semi-knowledgeable students of baseball history. You're much better off sitting down for a couple of hours with the "Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball."
But as far as membership goes, Pete Rose knew the rules and decided not to follow them. So he doesn't get a little plaque and an "H" by his name in "Total Baseball." So what? It's not like anyone took away his hit record or the memories of anyone who followed baseball in the 60s 70s and 80s. We all know who he is and what he did and the presence of a plaque won't change that. (Buck O'Neill though is a different matter--since we don't have any official records, the symbolism of the plaque is very important.)
Steroids I think are less of an issue than we want to make of them. If a voter thinks Player X might have inflated stats as a result of steroids (or home park or era or whatever), he's free to leave that name off the ballot for the time being for the sake of future context. And it's perfectly reasonable to make a distinction between people who may have (at some point) taken performance enhancing drugs and those whose performances appear to have actually been enhanced by those drugs.