RIP Oscar Gamble 1949-2018

The Man. The Myth. The Afro.

Hundreds of men have hit 200 homers in the major leagues.  No one has ever rocked a hairdo like that.  “People don’t think it be like it is, but it do.”

Hall of Fame Foursome.

Hey look! It's late January and that means the white smoke is billowing from Cooperstown and the new Hall of Famers have been elected.  I like that after years of obstructionism and hardcore posturing by the electorate, the lists have been constantly three and four players the last few years.  With Jack Morris and Alan Trammell also elected, you've got a six-pack of players to give speeches in July.  With Bob Costas and the Spink awark winner, have an extra cup of coffee before watching that one.  Let's look at who the writers opened the ropes for:

Vladimir Guerrero.

Vlad was named on 392 of 422 ballots (92.2%) in his 2nd year of eligibility.

Guerrero is the perfect example of the notable bias some baseball writers have even to this day about electing players on their first ballot.  Looking at Vlad's numbers: 449 HR 1496 RBI and a .318/.379.553 slash line, how is he not a hall of famer?  Yet he jumped from 71% to 92% in a single year to walk into the hall; what changed between last year and this one?  It's not like his stats changed or even got reexamined.  There is the infuriating layer of voters who will never ever vote for a first year nominee because of Babe Ruth or some nonsense but the secondary layer is equally as frustrating.  They decide that a player is good enough for the hall but not good enough for the honor of first ballot induction.  The bar for who is a hall of famer is much much lower than Vlad Guerrero and yet the same shit still happens.  While the hall has gotten better over the years about electing obvious players on the first ballot, that Vlad had to wait is why the election system needs to be completely overhauled.

Jim Thome.

Jim was named on 379 of 422 ballots (89.8%) in his 1st year of eligibility.

I am glad Thome didn't get the shabby treatment Vlad received and got in on the first shot.  The only thing missing from Jim's resume is a good sturdy nickname.  He was a jovial mountain of a man who hit baseballs really far.  612 homers and 1699 RBIs speak for themselves but his .402 OBP more than make up for what the uninformed would poo-poo as a pedestrian .276 average.  He is a lot closer to Frank Thomas than Harmon Killebrew. 

Trevor Hoffman.

Trevor was named on 337 of 422 ballots (79.9%) in his 3rd year of eligibility.  Hoffman is proof positive that voters have no idea what to do with closers and especially newer one-inning closers.  Goose Gossage had to wait 9 times to get into the hall yet Trevor waited 1/3 as long.  The convoluted and arbitrary save statistic has come to be exploited in the modern setting and voters can't wrap their heads around what that means.  Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman have similar statistics but saying they were similar pitchers is like saying George Clooney and I are similar just because we are both adult men.  I am not saying Hoffman isn't a great modern closer but with players like Edgar Martinez not in the hall, it really makes you wonder why Hoffman is.

Larry Wayne Jones.

Larry was elected with 410 votes out of 422 which is 97.2% of the vote in his first time on the ballot.  Usually I castigate the voters who leave off an obvious, no doubt, slam dunk hall of famer but in this particular instance, I salute the 12 individuals who decided he wasn't.  I will this one time admit a begrudging respect for how good a player he was but as a Mets fan who lived through the turn of the millennium, my default setting is "wow, fuck that guy."  I made this page of cards for the inevitable day he was elected to the hall and now I can put it in the book and try to forget it and he ever existed.  No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask?

The Fire Is So Delightful.

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling ring ting tingling too
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling "yoohoo!"
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Giddy yap, giddy yap, giddy yap let's go, Let's look at the show
We're riding in a wonderland of snow.
Giddy yap, giddy yap, giddy yap it's grand, just holding your hand
We're gliding along with a song of a wintry fairy land

Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we
We're snuggled up together like two birds of a feather would be
Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

There's a birthday party at the home of Farmer Gray
It'll be the perfect ending a of perfect day
We'll be singing the songs we love to sing without a single stop
At the fireplace while we watch the chestnuts pop. pop! pop! pop!

There's a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy
When they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie
It'll nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives
These wonderful things are the things we remember all through our lives!

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling ring ting tingling too
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling "yoohoo!"
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

It's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.
It's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Hear Them Roar.

       I was as surprised as you are right now to see that I am posting to hear that last night, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris were elected to the Hall of Fame. First of all, I was completely unaware that the Modern Baseball Committee was even meeting much less that their results would be given a good month before the usual main announcement.  Second of all, this tickles me because they were two of the best players of their time and their exclusion was a glaring omission (and I am not even a Tigers fan). 

The best percentage of the vote Alan Trammell ever got from the writers was 40.9% in his last year of eligibility. This is pretty damn ridiculous.

I believe poor Alan retired and became eligible for the hall at the absolute wrong time possible for a player of his type.  While his career was winding down, A-Rod, Nomar, and Jeter were all the rage and spending their time destroying the cliched concept of what a shortstop could be.  Even though Alan spent 2 decades as the best all-around shortstop not named Cal Ripken Jr. in the American League, with the Big Three as the new hotness, Trammell's career seemed somehow lacking - even though his 1987 stacks up with any shortstop season of those guys (that he didn't win that MVP is proof that baseball writers in the 1980s were all huffing paint or something).  Luckily, it didn't take until he was an old man (or dead) for perspective to sink in.  I always feared that sometime in 2060, some future baseball historian would look at the beautiful double play combination of Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell and realize a horrible injustice had been done and their grandchildren would have to accept their enshrinement.  Now, all someone has to do is realize that Lou Whitaker's numbers are also very hall worthy.  The fact that he fell off the ballot in his first year is a travesty.

The best percentage Jack Morris ever got from the writers was 67.7% in his second to last year on the ballot.  When you get that high a percentage in your 14th year, it is usually practically a guaranteed springboard to induction.  Somehow though, in his last time around, he only got 61.5% and didn't get in.  Obviously, the paint huffing among baseball writers continues unabated.  





































The knocks always came hard against Jack Morris: his 3.90 ERA was terrible for his era, his 105 ERA+ meant he was only a slightly above average pitcher, he didn't have a great peak, he didn't win 300 games, his mustache wasn't as cool as Rollie Fingers' - the list was long and got even sillier than that.  First and foremost, I am a firm believer in looking at the legacy of Hall of Famers in context among and against their peers, though.  Suddenly, Morris starts to look pretty remarkable: 14 consecutive opening day starts, highest paid pitcher several years, started game one of the World Series twice and of the LCS four different times.  Not to mention that minor trifle of game 7 of the 1991 World Series when he threw 10 shutout innings and was the winning pitcher (I am pretty sure he would have thrown 20 innings that night if Tom Kelly had asked).  In short, he was an ace, a horse.  The guy who said "jump on my back boys, I'll carry you home."  The Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson type guy.  Those guys belong in the hall and I am glad they came to their senses and put him in Cooperstown where he belongs.

First Things First.

       Ah, Opening Day.  There is nothing else like it.  Except, well, it is now stretched out over a few days so I guess MLB should just trademark Opening Few Days and get it over with.  But enough with the awful march of commerce, let us embrace the wonderful march of time.  The sun is up, the sky is blue (etc.) and the Mets are out in Flushing adding to baseball's best record on Opening Day.

This year at CitiField, the ceremonial First Pitch was very emotional.

My favorite meaningless statistic is that the Mets are now 36-20 on opening day, the best percentage in baseball history.  Also quirky - and often pointed out - is that they won a World Series (1969) before they actually won on opening day (1970) which means they are 36-12 since that Miracle happened.  Fascinating and stupid.

On a more card related point, this is what the 2017 Topps page ended up looking like:

I am still not crazy about the design and it has yet to grow on me.  That along with this year's Heritage being the burlap abortion that is 1968 Topps, I am not in a collecting happy place right now (and let's not even bring up that Panini decided that the 1990 Donruss design needed to be brought back, ugh).

I did, however, follow through on my threat to tweak the Salute inserts into a better looking base design:

My photoshop skills are weak at best, but I think by making the photo a tad larger by dragging out the half-border and replacing the insert title with the position, you have at least a good starting point for a much better and cleaner design than the inception angle boxes Topps gave us this year.  With a little more skill and time, I am sure the gold stripe could match the team colors and the city name in that right border could be something else as well (though I kinda like the half-font thing going on there).  But this is what I was driving at when I critiqued the 2017 base design and in a rare instance, I don't think I am crazy or wrong here.  What do you think? Has anyone else done something similar recently?  Let me know since this is the first year I have been that turned off by the Topps design since I started the blog.