HOF Ballots

[Tiger337]

15 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

just to play Devil's advocate - I can say you can look up who the best statistical players were on any baseball stat site - they will have their places right at the top - you don't need a museum for that to be confirmed or recognized. Being in or out of Cooperstown wont change anyone's understanding of what kind of hitter Barry Bonds was.

Ergo - save the museum for the people the sport wants to 'celebrate' - with all the texture that term might imply.

The musuem already does celebrate the history of the game and its players.  Bonds is in there.  Rose is in there.  The plaque room is different.  I think it should include all the greatest players.  

[casimir]

12 hours ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

It's a sham...

A traveshamockery.

[ewsieg]

Kind of glad Bonds and Clemens didn't get in.  They HoF doesn't deserve to have them if they were going to string it out this long anyway.  The writers want to make a point, fine don't let them in year 1, but 10 years, what a complete joke.

Bonds should be celebrated for what he gave baseball.  I'm sure I'll miss a few memorable periods of baseball, and i'm referring to long periods rather than some of the big time plays/games.  But in terms of memorable periods of baseball, as a person in their mid 40's, I think the summer of McGuire/Sosa, Bonds 2001-2004, Verlander's 2011 season, and Ohtani from this year.  As a baseball junkie, if I had a chance to watch Pujol's, Trout, Kershaw, etc, I'd watch them if I could, but I would go out of my way to follow those I mentioned first.   Baseball needs that, Bonds gave it to them for years.  

 

[buddha]

i remember how they cut away from regular programming to show sosa and mcgwire at bats.  baseball hasnt had that kind of juice (ha!) in years.  the only other time i remember was when ripken broke gehrig's record, but espn ruined it by having chris berman there crying.

anyway, sosa/mcgwire was a big deal and did a lot for baseball.

[RandyMarsh]

I was a junior in High School when McGwire broke the record and I remember it being the top story that was read over the PA on the daily announcements the next morning.

I couldn't fathom something like that happening today, maybe if the Tigers did something major it would happen locally but that's about it. 

[RandyMarsh]

I remember them cutting away to their at bats too. I was a huge Griffey fan and up until like the end of July or early August he was hanging pretty close with Sosa and Mcgwire so Baseball Tonight would have this slot machine graphic where each row was one of the players.

Anyway anytime one of them would hit a HR the graphic would spit out 3 rows of said player before cutting to the HR. I was always on the edge of my seat when the graphic came on hoping that it would land on 3 Griffeys.lol

[Tiger337]

I often wonder whether PEDs would have become such a big deal if Bonds didn't break McGwire's record.  It seemed like nobody really cared about PEDs until Bonds broke the record.  It's not like they didn't know athletes were taking them.  When I heard about football players using it many years before that, I just assumed it was being used in all sports.  

[Biff Mayhem]

7 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I often wonder whether PEDs would have become such a big deal if Bonds didn't break McGwire's record.  It seemed like nobody really cared about PEDs until Bonds broke the record.  It's not like they didn't know athletes were taking them.  When I heard about football players using it many years before that, I just assumed it was being used in all sports.  

I remember there being a lot of conversations when McGwire finally let the cat out of the bag by "accidentally" leaving his secret sauce visible in his locker during an interview. To your point, it exploded with Bonds.

[casimir]

On 1/25/2022 at 10:18 PM, Tiger337 said:

 

Another WAR factoid.  Bonds was the 6th pick of the 1st round.  His career WAR per bbref was 162.7.  The 5 picks before him had an aggregate WAR of 176.0.

[RandyMarsh]

44 minutes ago, casimir said:

Another WAR factoid.  Bonds was the 6th pick of the 1st round.  His career WAR per bbref was 162.7.  The 5 picks before him had an aggregate WAR of 176.0.

I'd imagine those top 4 probably have a higher WAR than the vast majority of top 4s in history as well. I don't know for sure but it seems like it would be pretty rare to have two guys with 55+ WAR and another with 34 in the top 4.  There's no doubt though that the roughly 340 combined WAR of the top 6 has to be not only the best top 6 but probably better than any one 1st round if not entire draft of all time.  

[Tiger337]

2 hours ago, Biff Mayhem said:

I remember there being a lot of conversations when McGwire finally let the cat out of the bag by "accidentally" leaving his secret sauce visible in his locker during an interview. To your point, it exploded with Bonds.

I believe McGwire left the PEDs visible in his locker during the 1998 season when everyone was enjoying the home run chase.  There was some discussion about it, but it was then swept under the carpet because the home run explosion was good for publicity.  

[RandyMarsh]

Like I said before I was in High School during the chase and I remember creatine and androstenedione became really popular among all the athletes in my school during that time.  I don't remember if Mcgwire came out and credited those supplements but I do know that was the narrative going around my school.  One of my classmates had an older brother who worked at GNC so he would always get the stuff for everybody.  

[Tiger337]

5 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

Like I said before I was in High School during the chase and I remember creatine and androstenedione became really popular among all the athletes in my school during that time.  I don't remember if Mcgwire came out and credited those supplements but I do know that was the narrative going around my school.  One of my classmates had an older brother who worked at GNC so he would always get the stuff for everybody.  

Yeah, it was definitely well known that athletes were using the stuff.  I remember people talking about it in the 80s.  

[IdahoBert]

Creatine was routinely in the water or Gatorade that the football players at Bishop Kelley High in Boise Idaho drank during practice and games. One of my best friends was the assistant football coach and a theology teacher and he wouldn’t make this stuff up.

In 1987 I knew ordinary morons at gyms were using ‘roids who had developed these ugly stretch marks on their pectoral muscles because they had grown so fast the skin could not adequately stretch to accommodate the artificially obtained musculature. If idiots could get hold of it then, surely professional athletes with vastly more at stake could and did. 

[Jim Cowan]

A local guy here, Zenon Andrusyshyn, got a track scholarship to UCLA in about 1965 and walked onto the football team as a placekicker.  The football team was using steroids and he took them for a couple of years.

[Dan Gilmore]

Do they have Bonds biceps and elbow armor in the Hall?

[chasfh]

On 1/25/2022 at 9:18 PM, Tiger337 said:

 

Not only that, but the difference between David Ortiz's career WAR and Alex Rodriguez's career WAR is another David Ortiz career WAR, with enough WAR left over to cover any one of another 16,300 or so big leaguers.

 

 

[Tiger337]

 

 

[Biff Mayhem]

Baseball needs characters like Ricky.

[RandyMarsh]

I was so disappointed when that story about him and Olerud got debunked. That would have been an all time great story if true. 

[Jim Cowan]

I've told this before but a friend was on vacation in Bermuda once, he and his wife were out for dinner and he got up to use the washroom and noticed that one of the other customers was Rickey Henderson.  He was wearing a patterned black and white shirt and ad my friend got closer he could see what the pattern was - a collage of newspaper articles about Rickey Henderson.

[Tiger337]

Arrogance is entertaining if

(1) You can back it up.

(2) You are genuinely confident and not just showing off

I think Henderson was both.  I don't care for some of the stuff they do today where each player tries to one up the previous bat flip or strikeout dance or plans it ahead of time.  I don't really care.  If they are enjoying themselves, then it's fine, but I don't find it entertaining.    

 

[Jim Cowan]

7 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Arrogance is entertaining if

(1) You can back it up.

(2) You are genuinely confident and not just showing off

I think Henderson was both.  I don't care for some of the stuff they do today where each player tries to one up the previous bat flip or strikeout dance or plans it ahead of time.  I don't really care.  If they are enjoying themselves, then it's fine, but I don't find it entertaining.    

 

I agree, and Henderson could get away with it, the shirt would have suited him perfectly.

[Tigeraholic1]

[Tigeraholic1]