The Baseball Writers of America have spoken, and this year Rickey Henderson, in his first year of eligibility, and Jim Rice, in his fifteenth and final year of eligibility, were elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Part One – Rickey Henderson
Right off the bat, the greatness of Rickey Henderson is established by the fact that he hit 297 career home runs playing in cavernous home parks like Oakland and Yankee Stadium, while Rice hit 382 career home runs playing in hitter-friendly Fenway Park. We don’t think of Rickey Henderson as a home run hitter, yet there he is, 122nd overall in career home runs among all players who ever played the game. Rice is 55th on the same list, but then again, just about the only thing Rice did was hit homers and extra base hits–it’s not as if he could run or field.
Rickey Henderson like Lenny Dykstra was not a big guy. He was 5′10″. He batted RH, but threw left. Here’s his career line: .279 BA/.401 OBA/.419 SA. Think about that–a .400 career On Base Average. For twenty five seasons in the bigs. That’s an unimaginable number. In fact, it’s 56th all-time, and many of the top 50 are from the 1st half of the 20th century. In 1990, Henderson was the MVP of the American League, leading Oakland to a 103 win season and the AL Pennant, one of the greatest seasons in the great history of the As franchise. Although they lost the series to a very good Cincinnati Reds franchise, Henderson had a marquee season for Oakland, swatting 28 homers, 33 doubles, 97 walks, stealing 65 bases, scoring 119 runs and registering a staggering park adjusted ops+ of 182 over league average.
Rickey Henderson, in short, was baseball’s greatest leadoff man. He was a force of chaos and destruction at the top of the order. He was in our era what Ty Cobb must have been in his era–a force of nature that could not and would not be contained. Henderson could beat you with the long ball–he had more leadoff home runs than just about anyone–he could beat you with the walk–and then stretch it to a double or triple with stolen bases–he could score almost at will. He broke Ty Cobb’s and Lou Brock’s records for stolen bases in a season, and eventually, for stolen bases in a career. With 1406 stolen bases for his career, Henderson has a record that is unlikely to be broken anytime soon.
Henderson ranks first in career runs scored with 2295. With 3055 hits, he is 21st in career hits. 4,588 career bases give him 35th on the career list. 510 doubles put him 40th on the career list. 2190 walks are second all time on the career list. He led the league in stolen bases twelve different times along the way to his 1406 career stolen bases, which is of course first in the career record books. And his 297 home runs are 122d on the career list. His runs created of 2164 are 10th all time. He has the second highest career power-speed number of all time.
Rickey Henderson was born in December of 1958. He was at the tail end of the baby boomers. His impact on the sport of baseball was immediate and continuing, and to the end of his days as a ballplayer, he was a dangerous hitter and baserunner. He was always a hall of famer all the way. And he will always be an Oakland Athletic in my opinion, that’s how I will always remember him, as part of the rebuilding A’s of the early 80s, and then again as part of the 1990 three-peat dynasty. I know he spent some time as a Yankee, and played with Mattingly, but it never seemed those clubs got anywhere, for some reason.
Part Two – Jim Rice
Jim Rice’s election to the Hall of Fame is significant in two major ways.
First, Jim Rice is the first African-American ever inducted from the Boston Red Sox into the Hall of Fame. Now I recognize in the age of Obama, we aren’t looking at race the same way we once did, but there has been published a well-known book on the Red Sox and their past ways of racism, and the issue must be dealt with. For years, Jim Rice was just about the only African-American star of any magnitude on the Boston Red Sox. The Boston Red Sox were the last team in the AL to integrate (remember Pumpsie Green?) and it was widely rumored they traded Don Wilson to the Detroit Tigers because there was an unwritten rule they couldn’t have more than two blacks on the team at any one time after Reggie Smith came up with them in the mid-60s. Of course, Reggie Smith also eventually was shipped out. Don Wilson helped Detroit beat Boston in the 68 pennant race and win the 68 world series, and Reggie Smith helped the LA Dodgers win a series of pennants in the 1970s.
One often wonders what an outfield of Jim Rice, Fred Lynn and Reggie Smith might have been like, but we’ll never know because the Red Sox preferred white guys like Dwight Evans back in those days.
This is not to diminish the 1970s Red Sox, or the 1975 World Series, or the accomplishments of Jim Rice. But Jim Rice’s main accomplishment, to be fair, was to break the color line in a racist ballclub playing in a racist town during the 1970s. A lot of the troubles he had with the media could be directly traced to racism and racial issues. More was expected of him than of Fred Lynn or Carlton Fisk.
Perhaps with the advent of David Ortiz and others, this issue has gone away. Ellis Burks was widely quoted as saying there were still racial problems on the Red Sox as late as the 1990s, a major factor in his going to Colorado. And it remains true that the Red Sox did not sign a major african american free agent for a long period of time during the 20th century. All these issue were raised in the book I referenced above.
One thing now is sure and certain–the Red Sox have an African-American Hall of Famer, and his name is Jim Rice, and he will always represent them in the Hall of Fame. No matter what the circumstances of his own day, Jim Rice will now be a shining beacon every spring training and every season to the younger african american or latin players on the Red Sox roster coming up.
The second significant aspect of Rice’s election is it’s recognition of the 70s Red Sox team as a great team worth honoring–the team that won just the one pennant in 1975, and the playoff for a pennant in 1978–with Rice, Lynn, Fisk, Tiant, et al. Rice was the best player of that group in the offensive sense, and his election to the Hall of Fame more or less validates that group as a great group of players. I myself think that Fred Lynn and Luis Tiant have Hall of Fame credentials, as did Carton Fisk, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame back in 2000. With Fisk and Rice now in the Hall, that team now has two major position players in the Hall of Fame.
Part Three – the Players left out of the Hall of Fame
Of the players left out of the hall of fame, Andre Dawson had the next highest number of votes. I myself would not vote for Andre Dawson for the Hall of Fame. I think that his power numbers were somewhat inflated by the parks he played in, and his on base averages were horrible, his strikeout numbers very high, and he just didn’t do that much offensively to help his team.
The next three are pitchers, Bert Blyleven, Lee Smith and Jack Morris, and all three, I believe, belong in the Hall of Fame. Blyleven and Morris were exceptional starters, Morris had more wins than anyone else in the 1980s, making him a dominant pitcher for a long period of time, and Morris was a winner on multiple World Series squads; Blyleven won 286 games and won them with terrible teams. Lee Smith was a feared reliever for a long time.
I am shocked that Tommy John, a truly great pitcher, failed to gain admission to the Hall of Fame. He is deserving.
Next is Tim Raines. When you look at Tim Raines on baseball-reference.com, his most similar player is Rickey Henderson, and vice versa. The fact is that Tim “Rock” Raines is and was a tremendous player and hitter. His career line is .294/.385/.425, quite similar really, to Henderson’s. In time, I think the voters will see that Raines, who is fifth all time in career steals, belongs in the Hall.
Next is Mark McGwire, who finished very low in the voting, probably because of the “juice” issue. Nonetheless, he was a key member of three Oakland As’ pennant winning clubs and one world championship club; he was a nine time all star; in his rookie year he hit 49 homers and was rookie of the year, in cavernous Oakland-Alameda Stadium; he also hit 42 and 52 homers in other seasons in the same park. He walked more than 100 times a year, sometimes 150 times a year. His park-adjusted ops+ numbers are astonishing–in some cases 200+ for some seasons. His career ops+ is 162 over league, which is phenomenal. His career line is .263/.394/.588, which means he had a lifetime on base average of almost .400, even separate and apart from his home run hitting, and then a lifetime slugging average of nearly .600.
Here I have to disagree with the writers. The numbers speak too loudly. Mark McGwire was not a great player, he was a player for the ages. He is a clear, bona fide Hall of Famer. He hit 583 homers, nearly 600, and he spent half of his career in a poor hitter’s park in Oakland, where it is impossible to hit a homer, but he hit them anyway. It’s safe to say that he probably lost ten homers for every year he played in Oakland, which means that McGwire would be closer to 700 career if he’d spent his whole career in St. Louis.
I would argue that his jump to 65 and 70 was not juice, but a park effect due to his leaving Oakland and going to St. Louis. He was hitting 40, 50 homers a year in Oakland, a poor hitting park, and then went to St. Louis, a good homer park. Now he was going from losing ten homers a year to perhaps gaining ten–consequently he went from 40 to 70 homers in a season. The park effects explain everything.
Just to prove this, take his 1992 season in Oakland, where he hit 42 homers. His park adjusted ops+ is 177. Now look at his 1999 season in St. Louis, where he hit 65 homers. His park adjusted ops+ is 177. He has the same park adjusted offensive output over league–it’s just that the fences are friendlier in St. Louis, so he gets 65 bombs instead of 42 bombs in St. Louis.
Is McGwire really that good that it took a move to St. Louis to show his greatness? In a word, yes. Remember Reggie Jackson? He was hitting 47 homers, 35 homers, 37 homers in Oakland–but when he moved to the rightfield porch in Yankee Stadium, everyone woke up to the fact that he was a superstar. Again, park effects.
McGwire’s adjusted career OPS number of +162 is twelfth highest in history. His home run number of 583 is 8th overall, but i’m suggested that he was robbed of about a hundred homers by Oakland’s park, and so should rank much higher. And McGwire was a winner–he helped St. Louis get to the Playoffs in 2000 and 2001 as well as capture a division crown–making him part of five playoff teams in his career, three pennant winners and a world series winner.
Going down the rest of the list of players on the HOF ballot, I give a slight nod to Alan Trammell.
But the one player who really belongs in the Hall of Fame, who has been slighted by the voters, is Don Mattingly. Donnie Baseball was a lifetime .300 hitter, with a career line of .307/.358/.471, batting in Yankee Stadium all of his career. He was the 1985 AL MVP and finished 2d in the MVP voting another year, in the top 5 in MVP voting another year, and in the top 10 in MVP voting another year. In 1986, he had 238 hits, 31 homers, 53 doubles, 113 RBI and batted .353 in one of the most spectacular seasons ever in Yankee history. He was a six time all star, and a three time silver slugger award winner. He won the AL batting title in 1984, batting .343. He led the AL in slugging percentage in 1986 at .573. He led the AL in hits in 1984 with 207 and in 1986 with 238. He led the AL in total bases in 1985 with 370 and in 1986 with 388. He led the AL with RBI with 145 in 1985. He won nine consecutive AL gold gloves at first base.
I recognize that Donnie Baseball was limited in his later career by back and other injuries, and maybe he didn’t get some of the career numbers that some others got. But during his peak years, Donnie Baseball dominated the AL like no other Yankee player had since Joe Gordon or Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth–and he was a pure hitter, a guy who could really lay the bat on the ball. And he could field. And, most beautifully, he struck out about 30 times a year. All year. Don Mattingly’s career strikeout total is 444 in 14 seasons played. The man has 442 career doubles, 222 career homers, 20 career triples. He has more career extra base hits than he has career strikeouts. Consider that for a moment. Ryan Howard, who we all know and love, has struck out about 500 times the past three seasons alone. Bobby Abreu, who we all celebrate as a great sabrmetric player, strikes out 100 times a year. Don Mattingly, in 1985-1986, struck out 33, 41 and 35 times while getting more than 200 hits each of those seasons.
Not since Joe Sewell have we ever seen a player get so many hits while striking out so little.
Consider this a ringing endorsement of Don Mattingly aka Donnie Baseball for the Hall of Fame. Few like him shall pass his way again.
And, as much as I might like Jim Rice, I’d rather field a team of nine career peak Don Mattinglys against your nine career peak Jim Rices any day of the week, and I bet I’d beat you 99 of 100 times. The fact is, at their respective peaks, Jim Rice wasn’t even half the player Don Mattingly was.
–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
Home of the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies
Happy New Year 2009
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