BBHOF Class of 2005

The ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame class of 2006 was released today and I will be making fearless predictions soon.

Here's the email I sent a year ago when the ballot for 2005 was released. This is what the Hall would have looked like if I was King of Baseball:

----------------------------------------------------

Below is this year's Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot. IMHO, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg were sure-locks this year, and everyone else is a toss-up

If I ran the Hall of Fame and my vote was the only one that counted...

- Andre Dawson would get a gimme for the knees he lost playing on AstroTurf for the Expos, a substance that should be banned in the same category as acid rock at a church recital.

- Jim Abbott may not be a baseball HOFer, but he's a true American hero for inspiring a generation of kids for being better than they thought they were. He's in.

- Rich Gossage should be in the Hall, like there's any question, but players with loud nicknames are automatically cool ("GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!!!"). Ditto for Chili Davis.

- One guy in the Hall has a disease named after him. Let's put one in the Hall that has a career-saving operation named after him. Tommy John, come on down.

- The HOF is for career excellence, but I'm partial to a guy who pitched his team to a World Series victory in a series-clinching game. And the game went into extra innings. Jack Morris is in.

- Dale Murphy was (and is) a Christian gentleman in a sport and time that made bad decisions easy things to do. Oh yeah: he was a league MVP, he played hard, and gave the Braves street cred before their current run of excellence. You're in, Dale.

- Lee Smith was the Mariano Rivera of his time. He'll lose votes because he bounced around baseball. Not a problem here. You da man, Lee.

- Darryl Strawberry is a tough one because the BBHOF seems to care more about character that the other Hall of Fames. Give me a break. We forgave Lawrence Taylor and put him in the NFL Hall of Fame, and he never met a line of cocaine he didn't snort. For Heaven's sake, Ty Cobb is in the BBHOF and his hatred of everyone is legendary. Even so, I'll take a pass this year. Darryl's vices and self-denial impacted his teammates and organizations, both on and off the field. My memory will be a little more faded next year.

- And finally: Steve Garvey. There are probably good reasons to vote him in, maybe, but they'll never convince me. All I can remember him knocking the Cubs out of the NL playoffs in 1984 and running the bases with his fist up high. I get a small amount of satisfaction that he had to do it in a butt-ugly uniform. Even so, he can bite me (I'm not bitter...nooooo....)

Later.