I’ll be on ESPNEWS today between 2 and 3 pm (along with Joe Sheehan and Tim Kurkjian) to react to the Hall of Fame announcement, which comes at 2 pm.
→ January 8, 2008
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→ January 8, 2008
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Attention Janeites…
Starting this weekend, PBS’ Monsterpiece Masterpiece Theatre will be showing adaptations of all six of Jane Austen’s novels, including the definitive five-hour Pride and Prejudice
→ January 6, 2008
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Updated ballot count.
This is it – my final tally. I’ve reached 120 ballots between published ones I found (with help from many folks, including the Tango and the indefatigable Repoz) and ones I gathered myself by talking to voters. That should push us up to around 20% of the total voting pool.
Without knowing whether or not there’s a skew to this sample, I’ll stick with what it tells us for predictions:
1. Goose Gossage will be elected to the Hall of Fame this year. He will be the only candidate elected.
2. If there are two players elected, the second one will be Jim Rice. However, it’s more likely that he will be elected in 2009 as he gains sympathy votes for his final year on the ballot.
3. Of the other players on this ballot, Blyleven, Dawson, and Raines will all eventually earn induction, but no one else will.
Also, my disclaimer: In response to a concern voiced in the comments by a Hall of Fame voter, let me emphasize that the totals below are a tally of published ballots and of ballots I have received from individual voters. It is not an official count.
As of 4:20 pm, Monday, 1/7:
| TOTAL | 120 | Pct |
| Gossage | 108 | 90% |
| Rice | 82 | 68% |
| Blyleven | 79 | 66% |
| Dawson | 79 | 66% |
| Morris | 58 | 48% |
| Smith | 44 | 37% |
| Raines | 42 | 35% |
| McGwire | 29 | 24% |
| Trammell | 29 | 24% |
| John | 22 | 18% |
| Concepcion | 16 | 13% |
| Murphy | 13 | 11% |
| Parker | 11 | 9% |
| Mattingly | 6 | 5% |
| Baines | 4 | 3% |
| Rose (write-in) | 2 | 2% |
→ January 6, 2008
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Love in the Time of Cholera.
I’m a big fan both of Gabriel García Márquez’s work and of magical realism in general, so I was excited to pick up Love in the Time of Cholera
The plot of Love in the Time of Cholera revolves around the long-suffering Florentino Ariza, who falls in love with Fermina Daza when the two are teenagers, only to see her reject him and marry the wealthy young doctor, Juvenal Urbino. Florentino decides that he must wait for Dr. Urbino to die, at which point he can resume his pursuit; in the meantime, he will get his rocks off with almost every woman who crosses his path (the novel claims he has 622 affairs over the 51 years of Fermina’s marriage, not including one-night stands, seemingly a mathematical impossibility for a man with a full-time job, even granting that Florentino conducted some of those affairs simultaneously), with a particular jones for widows. (I’ll give you all five seconds to glean the significance of that. Got it? Excellent. Let’s move on.)
It seems that this is intended as a soaring romantic tale of a love that wouldn’t die, that transcended the years, and so on, but that feeling disappears from the novel the moment Fermina rejects Florentino until after Dr. Urbino dies. García Márquez (GGM, from here on out) tells us Florentino’s emotional state is due to his immense ability to love, but it seems to me that Florentino was suffering from a case of arrested development. When he approaches Fermina just hours after her husband has died to reiterate his undying love for her, he’s not being romantic – he’s acting like a self-centered teenager, tone-deaf to the emotions of the people around him. It is as if he has caught a disease and doesn’t wish to be cured.
That ending is one of the book’s brightest spots; it’s a clever and unexpected resolution to a plot that looks to be headed toward a predictable, Hollywood-style ending (they get together, one of them dies, the women in the audience cry and see it over and over again), and it includes some of the book’s best writing. GGM does have an incredible gift with prose, and uses it to great effect in parts of the book about love and sex, fear of aging and death, and familial relationships:
But in her loneliness in the palace she learned to know him [her son], they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.
One negative aspect I’ve noticed in other GGM works shows up again here – his obsession with bodily functions. For example:
Even when it was not the season for asparagus, it had to be found regardless, so that he could take pleasure in the vapors of his own fragrant urine.
Wow. Thanks for sharing. Good thing this wasn’t a scratch-and-sniff edition. One of the fantastic things about GGM’s masterwork, One Hundred Years of Solitude
By tying up the romance story and fading out the various little subplots one by one, GGM leaves the reader with a satisfying ending that’s not unrealistically happy (one of the subplots ends very badly, although it’s brushed off a bit in the broader context). The problem is the meat of the book, where the reader sees Florentino and learns he’s not a romantic hero but a juvenile antihero unworthy of the exaltation that the ending seems to give him.
→ January 6, 2008
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Compelling arguments.
A little hit-and-run on yours truly in today’s Canton Repository:
SAY WHAT? Scouts Inc. analyst Keith Law said during a Jan. 2 chat on ESPN.com that he does not agree with the line of thinking that says Omar Vizquel should be considered for the Hall of Fame because another great defensive shortstop, Ozzie Smith, already is there. “The difference here is that Smith was a far, far better defensive player than Vizquel is,” Law said. Indians fans who saw Vizquel play every day would beg to differ.
Let’s just question someone’s credibility without providing any evidence to back it up. But hey, I’m sure those Cleveland fans who saw Vizquel play (but almost certainly never saw Smith) are unbiased, expert sources.
→ January 4, 2008
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Raines vs. Rice.
So I had an email exchange with a Hall voter who voted for Rice but not for Raines, and I thought it might be worth sharing. I’m withholding the voter’s name and am not saying whether or not his ballot was published. Anyway, I asked why he didn’t vote for Raines, and he wrote:
for a guy who played that many seasons, he should have well over 3,000 hits, or a .320 average. The steals are a plus, but on non-contending teams you can run every time you get on base after the all-star break, as henderson did in 1982.
Rice had a higher average, and he was a power hitter – and he didn’t play 10 years on artificial turf.
Here’s my reply; as I look at it now, it’s a little half-formed, but I’ll present it without edits. I was trying to rebut specific arguments rather than presenting a global case for Raines:
Batting average is inferior to on-base percentage in every way; batting average pretends that walks, hit by pitches, and (weirdest of all) sacrifice flies don’t exist. In fact, a walk is worth somewhere between 80% and 90% as much as a single is [KL: I guessed on this one, but if someone has a hard coefficient for BB wrt a single, I’d love to see it.], because most of the value in either event is in not making an out. So penalizing Raines for not hitting .320 in his career ignores the fact that his career OBP is one of the 100 best since 1900, higher than Willie Mays’.
Raines reached base safely 3977 times in his career. That’s more than Tony Gwynn (3955, in almost the same # of plate appearances), Lou Brock (3833, in 1000 more PA), and way more than Rice (3186, in about 1000 fewer PA), and just a shade behind Rod Carew (4096, in 200 more PA).
As for running every time after the All-Star Break on non-contending teams, Raines stole more bases in the first half in his career (405) than in the second half (403). Also, the Expos finished in first or within ten games of first in 1981, Raines’ first season; 1982; 1983; 1987; and 1990. He went to Chicago in 1991, and they finished in second, 8 games out; in 3rd in 1992, ten games out; and of course they won the division in 1993. He then won two rings as a part-time player in New York. Raines spent at least ten of his twenty full years on good clubs.
Rice, on the other hand, got more benefit from his home park than any Hall of Fame candidate I can remember. He hit .320/.374/.546 at home with 469 extra-base hits, and just .277/.330/.459 on the road with 375 extra-base hits. I compared him in my ESPN.com chat session yesterday to Dante Bichette, an OK player who looked like a star because he played in a great hitters’ park. So if you want to downgrade Raines for playing on turf for part of his career, you would need to downgrade Rice more for playing in a friendly stadium for his whole career.
→ January 4, 2008
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The Mailbag of Malcontent, part 2.
Received today in the ol’ ESPN mailbag, from a reader who didn’t provide his name or an email address:
just because u have some big degrees and use the words ‘above average” u think u kno so much. if u did u would not be a blog writer. u are the stephen a smith of baseball. someone that nobody in the industry respects and like u said u took this job for face time. u are an arrognat person that b/c of their degree belittles others b/c of ur credentials. u could not cut it in toronto (that should prove ur an idiot) and feel u are an expert. i only read ur blog b/c u discuss some minor leaguers, but u wonder why ur so unpopluar. i will pay u any amount and out analyze u on any position player. u make the most obvious observations-like rob deer strikes out. and by the way any asshole who gets into harvard (much easier in ur day) gets an A…look at the stats
This would not seem to require any further comment by me.
→ January 3, 2008
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Pozcars results.
For those of you who don’t already read Joe Posnanski’s blog – I’m assuming most of you do – he posted the results of the Pozcar Hall of Fame voting yesterday. No big shockers here: Gossage, Blyleven, and Raines got in. That’s my ballot, without McGwire (held down by scandal) and Trammell (a borderline choice, but one on which I’ve decided to put my imprimatur).
Some interesting observations:
Brady Anderson received 1.18% of the vote.
One of the three people who voted for Brady Anderson — former major league pitcher Al Fitzmorris. Why? “Because of Brady Anderson, I got to meet Ashley Judd.” Now THAT’S a Pozcars voter.
I would vote for Darin Erstad for the Hall of Fame if he introduced me to Ashley Judd, so I can understand this. Heck, if Erstad got me a night with Ashley Judd – who has been #1 on my theoretical laminated card since roughly 1996 – I’d hand-carve his plaque.
Pete Rose received 46.85% of the vote.
Joe Jackson received 52.76% of the vote.It did surprise me that quite a few Pozcars voters gave Jackson the vote but not Rose. I’m only guessing, but I suspect it came down to three things: The movie portrayals of Jackson as the innocent (or as the Michael Landonesque angel who saved James Earl Jones and brought Kevin Costner and his Dad together); the fact that Jackson’s been dead for more than a half century while Rose signs autographs in Vegas; the fact that Pete Rose lied.
I think Joe’s right on. The media portrayals of Jackson as an innocent rube who still played his heart out (but who, in reality, was more than happy to suck when the gamblers wanted him to suck) have altered the perceptions of a lot of casual fans of his role in the scandal, and the horror of what Jackson and the Black Sox did has faded with time, while Pete Rose – as unsympathetic a knucklehead as you can find – just keeps making a colossal ass of himself at every opportunity.
Anyway, read the rest. The end of his Trammell comment is particularly funny.
→ January 3, 2008
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Chat today.
Just a heads-up that I have a chat today at 1 pm over at the Four-Letter.
→ January 2, 2008
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Cards Q&A.
I did a Q&A with Erik over at Futureredbirds, mostly on the state of the Cardinals’ farm system.