I’ll be on ESPNews today at 4:10 pm and 6:20 pm EST, talking mostly Hall with a little Lowe thrown in.
There’s also a new column from me on Tim Raines’ candidacy that has been a little lost in the Rickey/Rice shuffle.
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Great article. This is the first time I’ve seen the Molitor comp made by a mainstream (professional (whatever the proper term is)) writer; any chance someone who voted for Molitor and not Raines will step up and explain their reasoning or should I stop holding my breath?
After the latest round of HOF voting, I was dumbfounded by the lack of support for (in my mind, at least) a first ballot hall of famer. This does bring up an interesting theory that is plausible and in fact probable. I certainly can’t begin to try to explain the low vote totals any other way.
Evoking the role of race (and the cultural implications of it) is at worst discussion-worthy, and you deserve credit for bringing it up in a thoughtful, even-handed manner. For the reasons you outline in your description of the Hall’s electorate, I am interested to see what reaction such sentiments will receive.
Keith,
Thanks for bringing to light the racial make-up of the BBRAA and for offering a potential and even probable reason for the Rock’s low vote totals. How long do you think it will be until they try to revoke your membership?
On a related topic, it strikes me as odd that Jim Rice’s vote totals increased by 4.2% from 2007 to 2008. What did Rice do over the last 12 months to warrant the increase? Do you beleive that voting members are swapping voting favors (you vote for Rice and I’ll vote for Dawson)? If not, how do you explain the increase?
Your premise seems a little flawed, because you begin by lamenting Rice and Dawson’s higher vote totals relative to Raines, and then you compare Raines to Molitor. If Molitor and Raines had been on the same ballot this would make sense, but they weren’t. Molitor made it in easily because he had 3,300 hits (and he was, after all, a legitimately great player). The superior player Raines is struggling because, except for steals, he doesn’t have the counting stats and his case is more subtle. The problem has much more to do with OBP and valuing defense than with cocaine and racism.
He was talking about how perceptions may unintentionally vary when race and drugs are involved, not outright “we will not elect a minority” level racism.
A bit off topic, but after reading Matt Meyer’s article on defense over at the four-letter, have we finally reached a time when teams will pay attention to this sort of thing? Or are teams’ general unwillingness to pay for above average offense but sub-par defense (Abreu, Dunn) just a sign of the economic times?
Seems teams have always paid attention to defense, to varying degrees. How they evaluated it (and then, how they valued it) has always been the more interesting question.