This year’s ballots are in, and Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson have been elected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame, Rice on his fifteenth and final time on the ballot, Henderson on his first. There’ll be a lot written about Henderson’s greatness and whether or not Rice deserves to be in the Hall, so I’m not going to bother with either of those. I’m going to touch on something that’s never discussed.

It’s the bottom of the ballot.

Because the following players got the following votes:

• Mark Grace (22 votes)
• David Cone (21 votes)
• Matt Williams (7 votes)
• Mo Vaughn (6 votes)
• Jay Bell (2 votes)
• Jesse Orosco (1 vote)

Personally, I find this trend of voting far more egregious than voting for or not voting for a borderline Hall of Fame candidate (as Rice is generally considered).

Mark Grace won four gold gloves at first base and a ring with Arizona, got on base a lot (.383 OBP), didn’t strike out, and had a little pop in his bat.  He also never had a 200 hit season, never drove in 100 runs in a season, scored 100 runs in a season once, and never finished above 13th in the MVP balloting.

David Cone won a Cy Young Award, several rings with the New York Yankees, made the All-Star team five times, and led the league in strikeouts twice.  He also never won the ERA title, struck out fewer batters than Frank Tanana, and came up short of 200 wins.

It gets much worse from here…

Matt Williams had four seasons with 100 RBIs, won four gold gloves, lead the league in home runs in 1994 (and was on pace to break Roger Maris’ record when the strike ended the season), and made the All-Star team five times.  He also never won an MVP, finished his career with a .317 OBP, and came up short of 400 home runs.

Mo Vaughn won an MVP trophy, made the All-Star team three times, and came a point short of winning the batting title in 1998 (losing it to Bernie Williams).  He also had only nine productive years, hit only 328 home runs, and struck out 1429 times, ranking him in between Jack Clark (who had 1300 more ABs) and Rice (who had 2700 more ABs).

Jay Bell won a ring with Arizona, a gold glove at shortstop in 1993, and had one season where he went 132/38/112 (R/HR/RBI).  He also only appears on the leaderboard for outs and sacrifice hits, batted .265/.343/.416 for his career, and despite that 38 homer season, hit only 195 for his career (without any notable speed or average).

Jesse Orosco was the first person to try Coca-Cola (that’s a joke, although he was the oldest player in baseball for six years).  He won a ring with the Mets in 1986, was a two-time All Star, and is the all time leader in pitching appearances.  He also saved only 144 games over his twenty-four year career, and didn’t compile any meaningful leaderboard statistics.

Aren’t I cherry-picking stats?  What’s the point here?

Yes, I am cherry-picking stats here, but the point I’m making is that while none of these players should ever be embarrassed by their career credentials – they’re certainly better than almost anyone who has ever played the game – none of them deserved even a single Hall Of Fame vote.

In order to put a player to be in the Hall Of Fame, I believe you can’t just make the argument that he belongs in the Hall, but also that he can’t be excluded.  Mark McGwire received 118 votes this year, and on his career alone, he should be in the Hall Of Fame.  But voters still have questions about whether he used illegal performance enhancing drugs or not.  Lee Smith received 240 votes, is third on the all-time saves list (having been passed by Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera, but none of his other numbers are particularly noteworthy, and voters still question the value of closers.

From Grace on down, the negatives vastly outweigh the positives.  For every “Well, hey, he did this…” there are several “Yeah, buts”.

I suppose there’s no reason to get too upset about this.  The balloting process requires players to get at least 5% of the votes cast in order to remain on the ballot, so Grace and the others won’t be on the ballot next year, and the guys in between will likely drift closer to the Hall or closer to being dropped from the ballot.  It’s just unfortunate that some voters clearly don’t take their responsibility seriously.

* From the late 80s commercial wherein an excited boy exclaimed “Wowee, Rickey Henderson!”, earning the enduring scorn of me and all of my friends.

Mark Teixeira was introduced as a Yankee the other day in a tremendous dog-and-pony show at the new stadium. He said a lot, and if want to hear another athlete trying to explain how it isn’t about the money, you can find the video on ESPN or CNNSI or any one of a number of other sites. If you want the key quote from Teixeira himself, here it is.

“I was very impressed with Cash”

Taken out of context? Yeah. Unfairly? Nope.

A while back I mentioned that if you’re a baseball fan, you should be rooting against the Tampa Bay Rays because any brief success that the Rays enjoy will perpetuate the myth that parity exists in Major League Baseball and that there’s no need for a salary cap. The Rays, with their $43 million payroll, reached the World Series, while the mighty New York Yankees and their $209 million payroll missed the playoffs entirely. This is excuse enough for many people to claim that money doesn’t always win championships, and that the little guy always has a chance.

And that’s true, I guess. Money doesn’t always win championships, and the little guy always does have a chance, but money spent against that chance diminishes it a little bit with each dollar spent. With the gauntlet having been thrown down in Tampa, everyone expected the Yankees to respond. They’ve responded not with a gauntlet of their own, but by nuking the entire site from orbit, as they say.

It’s the only way to be sure.

The main reason the Yankees failed to make the playoffs last season was pitching. Their number one starter, Chien-Ming Wang, was lost for the season, and while Mike Mussina went 20-9 for the Bombers, the rest of their starting pitching was either hurt or, not to put too fine a point on it, terrible. In response, the Yankees dropped $161 million on C.C. Sabathia and followed it up with another $82.5 for A.J. Burnett. Some folks have questioned the Burnett signing, citing his history of injuries, but the fact remains that the Yankees spent nearly one quarter of a billion dollars for the best two pitchers on the free agent market.

Today the Yankees went a step further, signing the best hitter on the market, Mark Teixeira, to an eight-year deal worth around $180 million. That brings their spending total to over $420 million this off-season (in second place are the New York Mets with around $37 million committed), making The Onion’s fictional story “Yankees Sign Every Player In Baseball” somehow more plausible. Rolling into a new stadium next season funded in part by the city of New York (don’t worry, the mayor got a luxury box out of the deal), the Yankees are in the unique position of batting their lifetime .303 hitting All-Star second baseman ninth in the lineup.

Don’t hate the Yankees for this. They’re only working within the system established by Major League Baseball and allowed to continue by people who own baseball teams because they like to look like big shots and couldn’t care whether their team has a legitimate chance to compete so long as the checks roll in. The Red Sox would do it too, if they could, as would the Mets, the Mariners, and even the lowly Pirates.

Hope you enjoyed your time at the top, Tampa Bay.

It may be difficult for you to consider this post as something other than the sour grapes of a disappointed Red Sox fan, but if you like the game of baseball, you should root for the Philadelphia Phillies to handily defeat the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays are undoubtedly the “feel-good” story of the year, but rest assured, you should be rooting for Philadelphia. This is not because:

• The Rays just beat the team that I root for (although this is true)
• The Phillies fans have suffered longer without a championship (although this is also true)
• Rays fans are a bunch of bandwagon hopping opportunists who don’t deserve a championship team (although this is unbelievably true)¹

No, the reason you should root against the Rays is because a Rays championship allows the Players Association and big-market clubs like the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, Mets, etc., to perpetuate the myth that parity exists in Major League Baseball and that there’s no need for a salary cap. Now, if you’re a fan of a big market club, go ahead and root for the Rays. But if you’re a fan of baseball, and would like to see some sort of equality in baseball, where every team has a legitimate chance to compete, even if it’s just once every few years, root for the Phillies.

¹ If you doubt this assertion, go ahead and watch Game 1 of the World Series and look at the fan base. Try to find somebody with Devil Rays paraphernalia rather than just Rays. The team changed its name this season, and there’s no one in the stadium wearing stuff from previous years. Add that to the fact that the Rays have finished last in attendance every years since 2000 (when they finished 13th out of 14th), and what you have is a whole bunch of bandwagon jumpers, or as we call them around here, pink hats.