Nine Innings: Griffey didn’t need every vote to verify his Cooperstown-worthy greatness
Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to the Hall of Fame Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Playing a special Cooperstown edition of Nine Innings while wondering whether there’s any overlap between the three voters who didn’t check Ken Griffey Jr.’s name and the two who dry-heaved a vote David Eckstein’s way …
1. Sure, it would have been cool for Junior to be elected unanimously. You know the aesthetics and the accomplishments. His sweet, stylish swing, graceful and fearless outfield play, backward-ballcapped cool, and abundant ebullience made him a transcendent player, one who is forever easy to visualize in your mind’s eye. The 630 home runs and 10 Gold Gloves weren’t bad, either. But unanimous? That never seemed realistic. Voters have a weird loyalty to history with this. Willie Mays is probably the greatest player of all-time, and he got just 94.7 percent in his election year, 1979. No one has been unanimous, and no one probably will in the near future, though Derek Jeter’s case is going to be very interesting in 2020. To come just three votes shy of unanimity isn’t a disappointment; Griffey still received the highest percentage of votes ever (99.3), and that is tribute to a player you couldn’t help but watch in awe and admiration during his ‘90s heyday. Here’s to The Kid, a genuine legend long before it was tallied up and official.
2. A couple of other takeaways: The other player elected, Mike Piazza (83 percent), could not be more deserving. He’s the greatest-hitting catcher of all-time. From 1995-97, he slashed .348/.419/.602 with an average of 36 homers per season – again, as a catcher. I’ll spare you any further jokes about how he should go in as a Marlin … Trevor Hoffman (67.3 percent in his first year of eligibility) is getting in while Billy Wagner (10.5 percent), arguably a more dominant closer, has a long way to go; Alan Trammell (40.3 percent) fell 150 votes short of enshrinement in his last year on the ballot, but he did survive 14 years longer on the ballot than his double-play partner, Lou Whitaker. Both should be in Cooperstown, and Sweet Lou actually has a better case; Edgar Martinez (43.4 percent), gained 16.4 percent this year, an encouraging trend given that he deserves to be the one to open the door to Cooperstown for designated hitters such as David Ortiz.
3. Other than seeing Griffey and Piazza elected, the greatest satisfaction of the day came from the leap Tim Raines made in the balloting in his ninth year of eligibility. He received 69.8 percent of the vote, up from 55 percent last year, and his 307 votes left him just 23 shy of the 330 required for enshrinement this year. The thoughtful and true cases for his worthiness have been made time and again by some smart writers over the last couple of years, and I worried that there might be some backlash from those defiant and closed-minded voters who are tired of hearing that he got on base more times than Tony Gwynn or was superior to Lou Brock or was the second-best leadoff hitter of all-time to the transcendent Rickey Henderson. That backlash, it turns out, did not happen, in part I suppose because the Hall of Fame culled a large number of voters who were no longer involved in covering the game and had fallen behind the times. I still have some concern as to whether Raines makes it in next year on his final year on the ballot. But his chances – and the collective respect for his sensational, unheralded career – have never been greater than they are right now.
4. The most obvious victim of the finite ballot was Jim Edmonds, who hit 393 homers, had a .903 OPS, won eight Gold Gloves, and received just 11 votes. As Alex Speier noted the other day in the Globe, Edmonds’s case is pretty similar to that of Dwight Evans (385 homers, .840 OPS, eight Gold Gloves, and a 127 adjusted OPS to Edmonds’s 132.) Evans got three years on the ballot, falling off in 1999 when he got just 3.6 percent of the vote, finishing behind the likes of Ron Guidry, Steve Garvey, Bob Boone, and Mickey Lolich. That was ridiculous, and yet a fairer fate than the one Edmonds encountered Wednesday
5. Being a younger fella and all (humor me, please – I’m a day older than Griffey and feeling ancient right about now) I’m entering just my second year in the BBWAA, so it’ll be a while before I have an official ballot. (I think that lines me up to vote for David Ortiz in his fourth year of eligibility, though math isn’t my strong suit.) But I do have years of experience in filling out a just-for-the-hell-of-it ballot. This year I would have voted for Griffey, Piazza, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Edgar Martinez, and Jeff Bagwell, with Larry Walker a tough but necessary omission.
6. Revisions may come on this over the next 360 or so days, but just for the fun of it, here’s the first draft of what my hypothetical ballot might look like next year: Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, Mussina, Raines, Bagwell, Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Pudge Rodriguez, and Walker. Vladi Guerrero has to wait only because of the 10-player limit. He’ll get in come 2018, when Chipper Jones and Jim Thome are the only two presumed shoo-in newcomers.
7. Anyone else around here bummed that Nomar Garciaparra was two-and-done on the ballot, receiving just eight votes (1.8 percent) this year? For those of us who remember fondly how the Pedro/Nomar-fueled clubs of the late ‘90s valiantly battled some stacked Yankees teams, watching him fall off the ballot is the final what-might-have-been. He’s not a Hall of Famer, but he probably would have stuck around longer had there not been a backlog of legitimate candidates ahead of him. You’d never have figured in their electric youth that Garciaparra would not be a Hall of Famer, A-Rod would have all kinds of baggage in his quest to get elected, while Jeter would be a mortal lock.
8. Next year’s ballot could conceivably have three former Red Sox shortstops, none of them named Nomar. His three immediate successors in Boston — Orlando Cabrera, Edgar Renteria, and Julio Lugo — all become eligible, though I seriously doubt Lugo makes the cut for the actual ballot since he was, you know, terrible.
9. Seems like there will be an eclectic and inordinate number of ex-Red Sox on next year’s ballot. The holdovers include Curt Schilling, Roger Clemens, Lee Smith, and Billy Wagner, the latter of whom I’m convinced could still retire a lefty hitter in a big spot. You can’t tell me he’s worse than Craig Breslow. I suppose you can throw Jeff Bagwell in there too if we’re including anyone who was dealt as a minor-leaguer in historically awful trades for a rental relief pitcher. Your call on that one. Newcomers include the three aforementioned shortstops, plus Manny (he’d damn well better get five percent), Jason Varitek, Tim Wakefield, Mike Cameron, Freddy Sanchez and … oh, no big deal, but did I mention J.D. Drew is eligble at last? YES, AMERICA AND FELLOW CELEBRANTS OF THE ENTIRE DREW FAMILY CATALOG! J.D. DREW IS ELIGIBLE AT LAST! If he makes the cut for the ballot, that must be considered the final word on whether he was a superior player to Trot Nixon (who did not even make the ballot in 2013), yes? I don’t even need to answer that. I know you’re with me. I’ll let you know when the #JDHOF2017 hashtag is ready to be sprung on the world. You think Raines has an internet following, just wait.
Chad Finn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeChadFinn.
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