Sports

Breaking Down My 2015 Hall of Fame Ballot

/ Carter Gaddis
My 2015 Hall of Fame ballot. I voted for first-timers Ken Griffey Jr. and Trevor Hoffman, along with holdovers Jeff Bagwell, Edgard Martinez, Fred McGriff, Mike Piazza, and Lee Smith.

My 2015 Hall of Fame ballot. I voted for first-timers Ken Griffey Jr. and Trevor Hoffman, along with holdovers Jeff Bagwell, Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff, Mike Piazza, and Lee Smith.

From the official Baseball Hall of Fame BBWAA Rules for Election – 5. Voting: Voting shall be based upon a player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

_____________________

I wish I had a cool Ken Griffey Jr. story to share. Naturally, I saw him play plenty of times, primarily against the (Devil) Rays. He actually was merely so-so in 42 games against Tampa Bay: batting average .231, on-based percentage .309, slugging percentage .444, and only nine of his 630 home runs.

Those mighty Rays, man. Giving Hall of Famers fits since 1998.

Putting the check next to Griffey’s name on the ballot was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made in my eight years as a voter. Simply, his career playing record and contributions to the Mariners and Reds warrant induction in the Hall of Fame. I don’t see much, if any, room for debate about Griffey, who was elected today along with Mike Piazza.

As always, I conducted my research. I’ll admit that was a much shorter process with Griffey.

I looked at his numbers on Baseball Reference, then checked his name on my ballot.

Similarly, I believe that Trevor Hoffman’s playing record and contributions to the Marlins, Padres, and Brewers made him a Hall of Famer. He became the all-time saves leader in 2006 and held that distinction until Mariano Rivera passed him in 2011. I checked Hoffman’s name not long after I checked Griffey’s.

Then I devoted a few minutes to each of the five holdovers from last year’s ballot, players I checked in December 2014 but who did not join John Smoltz, Pedro Martinez, Craig Biggio and Randy Johnson in the Hall. I found nothing to convince me I had been wrong about those five, so I checked them, too.

I was allowed to check as many as 10 players, but that’s where I stopped this year: seven.

Here are all seven players I checked this year (asterisk indicates holdover from 2014): Continue reading →

My 2015 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

/ Carter Gaddis / 5 Comments

Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know about newly elected Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson. The tall left-hander had a losing record against three teams in his distinguished career.

The Yankees (6-8) were one. The Mets (6-7) were another.

The third?

The … um … Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The Big Unit, one of the 10 best pitchers ever, winner of five Cy Young Awards, the all-time leader in strikeouts per nine innings (10.6) … that guy went 3-5 with a 5.43 ERA in 11 starts against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays from 1998-2006. The Rays averaged 97 losses during that time span, which happened also to be a time when I covered the team for the Tampa Tribune.

OK, here’s why I bring up the fact that Johnson – as deserving a first-ballot Hall of Famer as you’ll find – was generally pretty bad against the Rays, especially after going 2-1 with a 1.50 ERA in three starts against Tampa Bay’s inaugural team in ‘98. I bring it up to illustrate the point that baseball statistics are only useful and revelatory in the proper context.

Also, to remind you that all baseball players are fallible.

Very good baseball players make us forgive their failures. Great players make us forgive and forget their failures. Hall of Famers make us remember and celebrate their triumphs.

Does it matter, really, that one of the greatest pitchers ever struggled mightily against one of the worst teams of the 1990s and 2000s? Not today.

Today, we remember the glare, the intimidation, the menacing mound presence, the mullet. Today, we remember why he was called the Big Unit.

Today, Randy Johnson is an elected Hall of Famer, along with contemporaries Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio.

Today, we remember and celebrate their triumphs, ever mindful that none of them were even close to perfect, yet knowing that, for a time, they were the best of the best at what they did.

This was my seventh year participating as a voter in baseball’s Hall of Fame balloting. I earned that privilege as a member of the Tampa Bay chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America from 1999-2009, and I currently hold honorary member status.

I take the privilege seriously. Every year I evaluate the new candidates and re-evaluate the holdover candidates, even the players I voted for previously. There are no automatic selections on my ballot, ever.

That said, once I have decided that I consider a player a Hall of Famer, I vote for him. It never has made sense to me to leave a deserving player off my ballot because he hasn’t waited “long enough.”

No Barry Bonds. No Roger Clemens. No Mark McGwire. No Sammy Sosa. As players, they excelled. They put up the numbers and won the awards. They fall short for me because of the character/integrity/sportsmanship clause in the voting rules.

My thoughts on voting (or not voting) for candidates suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs (PED) are documented here: This Game’s Fun, OK? Baseball’s Hall of Fame Conundrum.

My ballot from last year can be found here: My 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot.

Further thoughts about the clause that stipulates voters must take into account sportsmanship, integrity and character during the voting process can be found here: If Only Integrity, Sportsmanship and Character Did Not Count in Hall of Fame Voting.

And here are the players I voted for this year:

Voters are allowed to select a maximum of 10 candidates. As you can see, I voted for nine, including six holdovers from last year’s ballot: Bagwell, Biggio, Edgar, McGriff, Piazza and Smith.

At some point in their careers, the three first-year candidates I selected arguably could be considered the best pitchers in their respective leagues. That statement is not likely to brook much argument when it comes to Pedro and Johnson, but it also applies to Smoltz, who from 1995-1999 was as dominant as any starting pitcher in the game.

A quick word about my borderline players: Mike Mussina, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell. I strongly re-evaluated their candidacies this year, particularly Mussina. I thought this might be the year that I deviated from my philosophy of deciding that if a player is a Hall of Famer, there is no reason for him to wait.

I gave all three a lot of consideration, and concluded once more that while all three were clearly great players, they didn’t quite make the Hall of Fame cut for me. There was no one, glaring reason why not for any of them.

Rather, as I considered their candidacies again – frankly, as I looked hard for reasons to include them – I could not convince myself that they were Hall of Fame caliber. I reserve the right to be wrong in my assessment (I didn’t vote for Barry Larkin or Andre Dawson, after all). I’m sure they’ll all draw the requisite votes to carry them over to next year’s ballot, and I will begin the evaluation process anew.

For now, though, I’m as satisfied as I can be that the nine players I selected deserved my vote. I look forward to next year, when the first-year candidates will include Ken Griffey Jr. and Trevor Hoffman.

I also hope that the voting process can continue to move toward clarity. I hate that the character/integrity/sportsmanship rule means we, as voters, must act as moral arbiters for baseball’s highest honor after an era when the game itself was tainted by steroids.

But that’s part of it, and I consider it an obligation to participate as well as I can, to conduct the research as thoroughly as possible and to present my conclusions with the utmost respect for the players and the game. I’ll continue to do so as long as they’ll have me.

I’ll leave you with a YouTube video of one of the best All-Star Game moments ever: the Big Unit  striking out terrified Phillies first baseman John Kruk.

 

A Quick Joe Maddon Story

/ Carter Gaddis / 3 Comments

Joe Maddon’s mind doesn’t work like yours and mine.

There is high intelligence. There is wit. There is humor. There is flexibility. There is nuance. There also is a stubborn streak that served him well with the Tampa Bay Rays.

I don’t believe I’ve ever been around someone who so deftly combines those traits with an uncanny ability to recall memories, down to the slightest detail, and have them at his disposal whenever he needed to make a point or reinforce a seemingly outlandish statement.

He’s through with the Rays after nine years, which is a little hard to believe right now.

It was one of the great pleasures of my career to be able to know Maddon for a while.

I was there, in my role as a baseball writer for the Tampa Tribune, during the early years. In 2006 and 2007, when the Rays were still be-Deviled, Maddon said all the right things. Even as Tampa Bay stumbled to awful seasons, and even though it looked much the same as it had under previous managers, Maddon never wavered.

Things were getting better, he said. There was an organizational plan, he insisted. The Rays Way of playing the game would one day take hold, was already taking hold, and soon we all would witness a real transformation on the field.

He said these things so often, and with such conviction, that I sometimes wondered about his grasp on reality. To that, I’m sure he would respond: “So do I sometimes.”

It’s all coming back to me now: the crazy road trip dress-up days, the wild defensive shifts based on statistical probability, the unwillingness to publicly criticize his players individually, the occasionally myopic-seeming optimism.

Maddon was right, of course. The Rays did turn into contenders, becoming a model franchise under the guidance of vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and Maddon.

Now? Friedman is gone, lured away by the Dodgers. Maddon is gone, choosing to leave when he was unable to reach an equitable agreement on a contract extension. I wonder if what they built will endure.

I guess we’ll find out. I sincerely hope that things don’t go back to the way they were before. The Tampa Bay area doesn’t deserve that. I believe owner Stu Sternberg and president of baseball operations Matt Silverman know what they’re doing. They’ve earned a lot of trust, just as Friedman and Maddon did.

Yet, it’s going to take some time to get used to the Rays without Andrew and Joe. It’ll be weird for a while.

Meanwhile, I’ll share a personal anecdote that gives you a small glimpse into Joe Maddon’s decency.

In 2006, on a visit to Fenway Park, my father-in-law was with a group of his clients on the field next to the visitors dugout during batting practice. He had leased the Legends Suite, and this was one of the perks.

After the writers were done with Maddon’s daily briefing in the dugout, I took the liberty of asking Joe if he had a second to say hello to my father-in-law. He said sure, and we walked up the steps to the roped-off area where they kept the fans on the field during pregame activities.

I introduced my father-in-law to the Tampa Bay manager, who proceeded to shake hands and pose for photos with every member of my father-in-law’s party. Joe spent 10 minutes with the group, and I scored major points with my wife’s dad.

That is only one, small, personal example of Joe’s kindness. His philanthropic efforts in the Tampa Bay area already are legendary. I hope he keeps Thanksmas going.

You’ll want to remember Maddon, Rays fans. Remember him, and appreciate him. His love of good wine, his unorthodox managing methods, the twinkle in his eye as he answered questions, his erudite approach to the game and life — we had it good with Joe Maddon.

We had it real good. Some team somewhere is about to get a Hall of Fame-caliber skipper.

 

 

Ray Rice is a Jerk, but the NFL Doesn’t Care if You Boycott

/ Carter Gaddis / 3 Comments

Ray Rice – jerk. Simple enough. He cold-cocked his fiancé in a casino elevator. He’s out, cut from the Baltimore Ravens and, at least for now, banished from the NFL.

About that banishment, though: Took you long enough, Roger Goodell. Oh, and way to go with that whole two-game suspension thing.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m hearing rumblings that some fans of the NFL are so disgusted, they’re turning their backs on the game. Which … OK. But who are you hurting, really? Only yourself.

And that brings me to a Facebook message conversation I had this morning with my friend Aaron Gouveia, publisher of the Daddy Files. Aaron is a lifelong New England Patriots season ticket holder. He wanted to name both of his sons Tom Brady Gouveia, but opted for Will and Sam – one Mike short of a linebacker trio.

Parents want to be able to tell their kids the right things when it comes to athletes gone bad. Me? I just tell them that athletes are human, too, that some of them do bad things, and that just because they can run faster and do other incredible things on the field or court, it doesn’t mean they can’t fail at life.

Aaron seems to be feeling a little guilt, though. He was having a tough time reconciling his love for the NFL with feelings of disgust toward the way Goodell has bungled the Ray Rice case.

I tried to talk him down over the course of a half-hour Facebook conversation. Here is a slightly edited version of that back-and-forth, reprinted with Aaron’s permission. Enjoy this glimpse into a couple of twisted minds, each of whom was determined to get his point across on a complex issue:

Aaron Gouveia: I’m trying to work up a Ray Rice related column, but it keeps turning into the same thing – I am a hypocrite and I am part of the problem because I have no plans to stop watching football even though I know I should.

Carter Gaddis: Why? Why should you stop watching football?

AG: Because the NFL is clearly covering this up and covering their asses. They all but condoned domestic violence both with that 2-game suspension and by letting guys like (Ray) McDonald and (Greg) Hardy continue to play.

CG: So, speak out against the NFL’s domestic abuse policy. Why punish yourself? You love the game. You love the sport. You love the Patriots.

AG: I stopped buying Barilla pasta, would never set foot in a Chick-fil-a, etc. All because I don’t want to support a company with those warped morals. Yet I’m going to watch football.

CG: But you didn’t stop watching the Pats after Aaron Hernandez turned out to be a murderer.

AG: The Pats cut Aaron Hernandez immediately. They didn’t hesitate to make the right decision even before their hand was forced.

CG: I don’t think you can conflate the Chick-fil-a thing or Barilla thing with this. I’m with you on both of those things, by the way. But this is different because no one’s human rights are being infringed upon. There have always been criminals on our courts and our fields.

AG: These other teams are allowing known criminals to play. (Greg) Hardy was convicted for (crap’s) sake.

And Goodell is lying. He’s flat out lying.

CG: Call him out, then.

AG: That’s the problem. I can’t call him out and continue to support the product that makes him so powerful.

Season ticket holder, watching the games, buying a new jersey, purchasing the Red Zone channel.

“I’M SO MAD AT YOU!!! Now here’s my money.”

CG: You’re over-thinking it, though. This isn’t a human rights issue. You can enjoy the product and still rage against the policies.

AG: I can. But I don’t think doing that gives me any credibility. Because if I’m really that upset about it, I can rail against AND stop supporting it. Except I don’t want to.

CG: To turn your back on it would be extreme. And unrealistic. It wouldn’t prove anything.

AG: I think it would. It would prove that even a diehard NFL fan is so sick of what’s happening he quit the NFL altogether.

CG: The only one who suffers, the only one who cares, is you if you boycott the game.

AG: Exactly. Which is why the NFL never has to change because too many people feel like I do – they’re upset but not upset enough to walk away.

CG: Anyway. Change has happened, though. Drug policies. Safety policies.

AG: In name only.

CG: No, these are real changes.

AG: (Ray) McDonald was allowed to play after being arrested for beating his wife WHILE THE RAY RICE FIASCO WAS HAPPENING.

That’s not change.

Also, think about this …

If an NFL player goes out and levels his girlfriend in an elevator today, what happens?

6 games suspension.

CG: Nope. The Rice thing now has changed that. This is fluid.

AG: No. That’s the new policy. Went into effect 8/28.

CG: That is out the window.

AG: Hopefully, but not yet.

CG: Rice has been suspended indefinitely and kicked off his team. So … out the window.

AG: I know. But under the new rules created because of Ray Rice, the person who does this next is currently subject to 6 games for a first offense.

In the end, the only real way to tell the NFL consumers are fed up is to stop watching the games. Stop buying tickets. Stop purchasing jerseys. And unfortunately, I’m just not prepared to do that because I’ve gone to almost every Patriots home game since the age of 6. My dad has had season tickets for more than 40 years. Tickets I’ll one day inherit. Tickets I hope to pass down to my son, along with a love for the Patriots. So while I can shout my outrage to the heavens about how the NFL handles domestic violence among its players, I’ll be a hypocrite if I do anything short of walk away.

CG: Rage on, dude. Trust me, no one is going to think any less of you because you still want to watch football. If anything, criticism means more coming from a devoted fan of the sport. A dissenting voice inside is more effective than a voice in the wilderness.

Aaron Gouveia and me at Cape Cod this past August. He's a fiery New England sports fan, but the NFL's stupidity regarding Ray Rice and domestic violence is making him feel guilty about watching and supporting football.

Aaron Gouveia and me at Cape Cod this past August. He’s a fiery New England sports fan, but the NFL’s stupidity regarding Ray Rice and domestic violence is making him feel guilty about watching and supporting football.

Swing, Fail, Swing Again

/ Carter Gaddis / 10 Comments
Baseball

Stay focused. Stay relaxed. See the ball, hit the ball. Failure is inevitable. How you respond is up to you, and it can make all the difference.

We played ball out back on a makeshift miniature diamond I mowed into the high, early summer St. Augustine grass. The 8-year-old stepped to the foam-rubber home plate, batting lefty, knees bent just so, arms high but relaxed, head cocked toward the pitcher — me.

I wound up and tossed the ball softly in his direction.

It occurs to me that I was 17 when I became a sportswriter. Nine years older than this boy at the plate. I stepped into that life before my life had really begun, and had no real reason to regret it for two decades. But at the end, when it was over, it could only be classified as a failure.

The boy swung and missed. The swing was handsy, too much upper body, but there was purpose to it and his head and eyes were where they were supposed to be. That’s more than half the battle when you’re learning to hit a baseball. Watch the ball hit the bat. See it, hit it. He retrieved the ball and tossed it back.

How could a career as rewarding as mine be considered a failure? Because it didn’t end on my terms. Where did the fault lie? With me alone? With a newspaper industry in its dying throes? A combination? No matter. When I began that career, I intended for it to end many years from now, many games later, when I was too old to carry my computer bag into the press box. Didn’t happen that way. I failed.

I reminded him to focus on the ball, to keep his arms relaxed, to step toward me, pivot and turn his hips, throw his hands at the ball and explode into the swing. I pitched, he swung — and missed again.

Failure of that sort — mammoth, life-altering, frightening — can derail a man. You think you’re moving along toward a certain destination, surely, confidently. And then … it stops. Even if you sensed it coming, knew failure was inevitable, it stung. Worse, for the first time in your life, you didn’t know what came next.

The ball sailed over the shrub and the external AC unit as he swung and missed a second time. It was a bad pitch, a ball in any league, but at age 8 he still swings at anything and everything. He has not yet developed a discerning eye, a well-defined hitting zone. Every pitch is a promise. Every swing and miss is that promise broken. He dropped the bat and hustled after the ball again.

You didn’t know what came next, but you understood for the first time in your life that nothing was promised. Really understood that fact, not merely the theory. That there were dead ends. 

He found the ball in the high grass and tossed it back. Insects disturbed by the lawn mower began to crowd around us. He swatted at a bug in front of his face and stepped in for one last pitch from dad.

There are dead ends. Failure is inevitable. How you respond to that inevitability determines whether dead ends crack and split and branch off in promising new directions or stay dead ends. You choose your response. You choose to move forward. You choose. That’s what failure does for you, if you let it. If you let it.

This one came in under-handed, an acquiescence to physics and undeveloped, 8-year-old muscles. His eyes grew large as it arced toward the plate.

He stepped. He pivoted. He swung.

My 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

/ Carter Gaddis / 12 Comments
Baseball Hall of Fame

My 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. I voted for nine players, including electees Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas.

I’m not smart enough to solve all of the problems that plague the voting process for baseball’s Hall of Fame. I’ve given my opinion, which is just that — one opinion. I think much of the angst and hand-wringing could be eliminated if they simply eliminated the voting rule that states we have to factor in sportsmanship, integrity and character. It works for the Pro Football Hall of Fame — which certainly doesn’t have things exactly right, but at least the process doesn’t force the voters to make educated guesses about who did and did not do things that were against the rules or the law.

It’s high time the voting process was revamped, anyway. If an attention-seeking sports columnist and TV personality from South Florida can thumb his nose at the process by giving his vote away to readers of a satirical sports news website, something clearly is wrong.

Still, it’s a process I feel compelled to take seriously. I spent 1999-2009 covering baseball, 11 consecutive seasons as a card-carrying, hard-traveling member of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Yes, it was a truncated career. It wasn’t my choice to leave newspapers, any more than it was the choice of so many others whose careers went south when the print industry imploded. I hung around long enough to meet the requirement for 10 consecutive years of uninterrupted membership. Growing up, I lived the game. I love it still, and that decade-plus I spent roaming clubhouses and press boxes was the culmination of a dream come true in a lot of ways.

So, I’ll keep voting until they tell me I should stop.

Here are my 2014 selections (I voted for nine players, one fewer than the 10-player limit):

  • Greg Maddux, RHP
  • Tom Glavine, LHP
  • Frank Thomas, DH/1B
  • Craig Biggio, 2B/C/CF
  • Jeff Bagwell, 1B
  • Fred McGriff, 1B
  • Lee Smith, RHP
  • Mike Piazza, C
  • Edgar Martinez, DH

This is my sixth year as a voter. My thoughts on the PED users already have been documented. And you can see by my ballot that my thoughts haven’t changed. I won’t vote for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa. I never voted for Rafael Palmeiro, who fell off the ballot this year. Rumor and innuendo are not necessarily enough to convince me to not vote for a player (witness my inclusion of rumored users Piazza and Bagwell). What separated those two from Bonds and Clemens? The overwhelming preponderance of circumstantial evidence against the all-time home run leader and the greatest right-handed pitcher in baseball history. Simply, the rumbling and whispers about Piazza and Bagwell just weren’t loud enough, and I think their numbers and contributions to their teams made them Hall of Fame players.

A few other notes.

I vote for Martinez because I believe that if we’re going to put relief pitchers into the Hall, all specialists should be included. This argument about “only” being a hitter and not contributing with a glove doesn’t make sense to me. Are we going to exclude pitchers because they can’t hit? Outfielders because they don’t pitch? Nonsense. Baseball specialists who excel at an extraordinary level should be considered for the Hall. Extraordinary specialists whose achievements are historical (such as closer Lee Smith) should be elected.

There’s also this: Martinez won the 2004 Roberto Clemente Award, which is bestowed upon the major leaguer who best combines giving back to the community with excellence on the field. Biggio won it in 2007. Why does this matter? Because if factoring in sportsmanship, integrity and character means Bonds and Clemens are out, how can we not take into account exemplary displays of those qualities? In other words, the way the rule works now, being a good guy during a playing career meant something. That’s one reason I voted for Dale Murphy for five consecutive years before his candidacy came to an end in 2013.

So far, I haven’t deviated from the belief that if a player is a Hall of Famer, there is no reason to leave him off the first year. I re-evaluate each candidate with each new ballot, but unless some new evidence came up the last time I voted, there is virtually no chance I’ll include him.

I’ll finish with this: If the integrity, sportsmanship and character rule was eliminated, I would not hesitate to vote for Bonds and Clemens. I didn’t ask to be some sort of moral cop when it comes to Hall of Fame voting, but as long as that rule is in there, I feel like it’s my responsibility to make as informed a decision as possible. Ultimately, it’s a futile exercise, because as I’ve written before — here and in my old life as a sportswriter — no one who didn’t see PED use happen knows for sure if it did. We’re guessing, at best. I hope I’ve made the right choices, and I hope the process is reformed soon.

If Only Integrity, Sportsmanship and Character Did Not Count in Hall of Fame Voting

/ Carter Gaddis / 10 Comments
BBWAA

A BBWAA Lifetime Honorary membership card, along with the envelopes for the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot.

I care about the Baseball Writers Association of America. I care deeply about the Hall of Fame vote I earned as an active member of that organization from 1999-2009. When my active membership lapsed after I was laid off from the newspaper where I worked for 16 years, I cared enough to pay the fee that ensured I would remain a lifetime honorary member.

The gold card that comes with honorary membership does more than allow me entry into any Major League ballpark in the country. It is my final tangible link to a 24-year sportswriting career that ended in 2010. It wasn’t entirely my choice to end that sportswriting career, but it’s over and I’ve moved on.

Mostly.

Every December I anticipate the arrival of the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot in the mail. Not in my e-mail inbox; in the mailbox that sits under a tree in my front yard next to my driveway. It comes in a distinctive manila envelope, stuffed in there along with a stamped return envelope, biographical information on each of the candidates, a letter from National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum President Jeff Idelson, and the BBWAA Rules for Election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

I’ll vote for the sixth time this year. Every December, I fax off my ballot to the BBWAA because I want to keep the actual paper it’s on. I sort of envision my kids’ kids holding it one day and talking about how their grandfather contributed, if only in a small way, to baseball history.

So, it means something to me. I covered the game long enough to earn that vote, and I actually got into sportswriting hoping to one day become a Hall of Fame voter. I consider it an honor and an important responsibility.

Now, I am aware that the system as it exists is flawed. It never was perfect, but the Steroid Era threw everything into disarray. The inherent subjectivity of the process practically guaranteed chaos as the list grew to include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and others whose candidacies have been tainted by suspicion (or hard evidence, in Palmeiro’s case).

I wrote pretty extensively about my feelings on the process last year. I ended up voting for seven players, none of whom were elected (we are allowed to vote for as many as 10). In fact, as you might recall, no one was elected by the writers.

Here are the players I voted for last year:

This year’s ballot includes Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas. I’m not saying that’s how I’ll vote, mind you. I’m simply pointing out that those three players are, frankly, Hall of Fame locks.

Where does that leave the likes of Bonds, Clemens, et al? Off my ballot, at least for now. As I’ve written before, it all comes down to Rule 5 of the BBWAA Rules for Election:

“Voting shall be based upon a player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”

I boldface the salient words – integrity, sportsmanship, character – because voting for the Hall of Fame would be a much different proposition without them. Those words transform an already subjective process into a guessing game. A game that I and 600 or so of my fellow voters are compelled to play every December.

The game reached a new level of absurdity this year when Deadspin announced that it would “buy” a BBWAA voter’s ballot and allow its readers to make the selections. I don’t blame Deadspin, which is just doing what it does. I honestly don’t even blame the anonymous voter who allegedly has sold his or her ballot to Deadspin. Just because I take the honor and responsibility seriously, it doesn’t mean the other 600 or so voters are obligated to do so. That person has his or her reasons, and I hope he or she spends the money well. (Might I suggest a donation to one of baseball’s most famous charities, the Jimmy Fund? Or the Children’s Cancer Center? Or anywhere else but the sell-out voter’s bank account? Because hey … it’s Christmas.)

That voter – or soon-to-be former voter, once his or her name becomes public – is no more absurd than the voters who decided Joe DiMaggio – Joe DiMaggio! – was not a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Or that Gaylord Perry, an admitted spit-ball pitcher, was somehow more worthy of election than others despite his transgressions.

Or the voters – like me – who take it upon themselves to act as gatekeepers in the face of rampant steroid use in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

There is a simple solution, you know.

Change the rules for election. To be precise, eliminate three words.

Integrity.

Sportsmanship.

Character.

Eliminate those stipulations, and we’re back to the numbers.

Then it would be like the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which explicitly prohibits the much smaller pool of voters from considering the off-field actions of players.

I can acknowledge right now that my ballot would look a lot different if not for the current wording of Rule 5. Bonds, Clemens and Palmeiro absolutely would have earned my vote. McGwire and Sosa might have, as well.

Those three words are there, though. And that means another year of hand-wringing, wondering, speculating. It means watching one of my fellow voters help push the whole thing to a new level of absurdity by selling it to a satirical sports website whose editors are in the business of exposing absurdity in sports – something they do quite well.

As for me, I will continue to take it as seriously as I always have. It means something, this signature honor bestowed only upon long-time baseball writers. It means I’m still part of the game in a small but meaningful way.

And it means I still have a voice in a complicated conversation that I care about a great deal, a conversation that I’m pretty sure is just getting started.

Why I Don’t Cover Baseball Any More

/ Carter Gaddis / 17 Comments

Pitchers and catchers report next week for spring training. On that day, I’ll pick up my sons at daycare, take them home, make their supper, beg them to eat their green beans, help them with their homework, maybe play with them for a while, help them get ready for bed, read them a book, yell at them to get back into bed, ask them don’t they know how late it is, chase them up the stairs and back into their bedrooms, threaten to withhold tomorrow’s dessert if they don’t go to sleep, and check on them on my way to bed, amazed, as always, at how achingly beautiful they are in repose.

It wasn’t so long ago I would not have been able to do any of those things. And not merely because I didn’t have kids back then. I wouldn’t have been able to do those things on the day pitchers and catchers report for spring training because I would have reported, too.

I might have mentioned once or twice that I used to cover baseball for a newspaper. I wrote about the Tampa Bay Rays for a newspaper here in Tampa. That job went away for good in July 2008. The layoff ended a 16-year run for me at the paper. The last decade of that was spent writing about baseball.

I asked off the Rays beat after the 2005 season. Why? Why would I leave what many people (myself included) would consider the career of a lifetime, the dream job? It couldn’t be more simple: My wife and I were expecting our first child in December of that year. There was no way I wanted to put my family through the rigors of a baseball season year after year after year.

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The Time We Almost Missed Christmas

/ Carter Gaddis / 4 Comments

We shuffled up to the customer service counter winded, defeated, dejected. The O’Hare concourse was empty. Anybody who had a chance to get somewhere that night, Christmas Eve 2000, was either there already or on the way. Not us. We were trapped in the giant airport on the outskirts of Chicago, stranded between working that day’s Buccaneers-Packers game at Lambeau Field and getting home in time to wake up in our own beds on Christmas morning.

There were five of us. Four were with the Tribune: a beat writer, a columnist, a photographer and me. The fifth covered the Bucs for the Orlando paper. I was the only one who didn’t have at least one kid waiting for me back in Tampa, but the house was full of in-laws, including some toddler cousins. The Orlando writer was on his cell phone when we got to the customer service counter to sort it all out.

“No, sweetheart, I won’t be there tonight,” he murmured. “Molly. Molly. Don’t cry, sweetheart. Daddy will be home tomorrow. … Well, I don’t know what time. Don’t cry, Molly. Put Mommy on the phone, OK? Don’t cry, sweetheart. Daddy’s sorry.”

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When you’re a sportswriter, you don’t think about what you do as sacrifice. The night-time hours, the weekends, the holidays lost, the ridiculous travel schedule – it’s just what you have to do to get the story, to cover the beat, to keep the job. It still hurts to miss things, but the ones who choose the life must absorb that pain and wear it like a badge. Those who can’t cut it are frowned upon or mocked. Oh, you miss home? Waahhh. Work at a bank. It’s the same macho approach whether you are a man or a woman. Those who make the choice know that they are privileged to have the job, that literally thousands of people are out there waiting to take their place, and any sign of weakness might just be the chink in the armor that allows the tip of the spear to penetrate.

In other words? Quit your bitching.

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The football game went into overtime (foreshadowing!). Packers 17, Bucs 14. We filed our stories and photos and headed to the airport. The plane left Green Bay on time. There was snow, of course. But a little snow didn’t delay us in Green Bay.

The delay came in Appleton. Why we stopped there, I’m still not sure. Maybe it was for fuel. Maybe it was to pick up a passenger. Either way … what? We stopped in Appleton? It took about five minutes to fly from Green Bay to Appleton. Five minutes. We were up, we landed. It was supposed to be a 15-minute stop, for no reason I could discern.

Instead, it lasted about two hours.

What. The Hell.

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I remember looking out the airplane window while we sat on the ground in Appleton. It was dark and white, and snow drifts were piled against the terminal walls. It looked cold.

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We were assured that we would make our flight in Chicago. It might be tight, we were told, but we’d make it. We might have to sprint through O’Hare hurdling airport chairs like O.J. Simpson in a Hertz commercial, but we would make the flight. Our departure gate wasn’t that far from our arrival gate, we were told, so we would make it.

O'Hare Neon

This light sculpture is called Sky’s the Limit. It’s a neon walkway at O’Hare. We saw it only in passing on Christmas Eve 2000.

We landed with 20 minutes to spare. We grabbed our carry-ons and bolted up the ramp. We would make it. We sprinted up the concourse, found the connecting passageway to our departure terminal, ran at top speed down a hallway lit by flowing neon lights. We would make it. We found the right terminal, ran past the other gates, counted the numbers to ours. We would make it.

And I swear this happened next: We saw our gate 50 yards ahead, three attendants hovering around the desk and the ramp door. We kicked it up a gear, sprinting, shouldering our computer bags, a bunch of out of shape sportswriters desperate to get home for Christmas. In slow motion, one of the attendants reached for the handle to close the ramp door. We would not make it. In slow motion, the attendant’s head turned toward us as we yelled for her to wait wait wait wait we’re coming don’t shut it yet hold on we’re almost there stop stop stop stop stop!

We would not make it. The door shut just as we got there. Click.

I lost it. We all did. They knew we were coming. They saw us. They had been told we were on the way.

Click.

There was a floor-to-ceiling window right next to the door. There, at the other end of the ramp, was our airplane. The ramp began to move away from the side of the airplane. Then, while my fellow travelers tried to reason with the attendants, I actually did something I’ve only ever seen in movies and TV shows. I banged on the window and tried to get the pilot’s attention. I hammered on that glass and waved my arms and yelled as loud as I could. The pilot never so much as glanced in my direction. The ramp kept moving away from the plane.

Merry Freaking Christmas.

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At the customer service desk, the Orlando reporter tried to comfort his young daughter on the phone. The airline customer service guy gave us all $100 vouchers for pretty much any local hotel we wanted to stay at that night. He also told us that the O’Hare Hilton had a Christmas Eve special. It was connected to the airport, so we decided to stay there. Then we were all booked on a first class flight for the next morning. To Orlando. Because there were no direct flights to Tampa until late in the day. So we rented cars, too. To drive from Orlando International Airport to Tampa International Airport, so we could pick up our cars before we drove home to our families.

Merry Freaking Christmas.

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After we checked into the O’Hare Hilton, we met down in the hotel bar. There was a Christmas Eve bowl game on. I think it was Georgia and Virginia in some very, very minor bowl in Hawaii, of all places. I don’t even think they play it anymore. So, we gathered at a table in the empty bar and watched a college football game. We ate bar food and drank. We toasted Christmas.

Then an old man in a gray suit and fedora stumped into the bar with the aid of a brass-handled wooden cane. He sat at the table next to us and ordered a drink. He placed his hat on the table in front of him and leaned his cane against a chair. He nodded to us and sipped his drink while he watched Georgia-Virginia in a bar at the O’Hare Hilton on Christmas Eve.

We sat and talked and asked the old man to join us and watched the game until it was time to go to bed.

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I can only imagine what it would be like to still be one of those guys. The guys who spend Christmas Eve working in Green Bay and miss their connecting flight home to Tampa. I never had to call my boys and explain through their tears that I wouldn’t be there when they woke up on Christmas morning. For that, I am grateful.

My sportswriting career didn’t end on my terms. I was laid off in 2008, freelanced for 19 months, then landed a Monday through Friday job writing and editing in a cubicle for an Internet marketing agency. That’s what I do now. I don’t have to concern myself with inexplicable layovers in Appleton, Wis., or callous gate attendants or inattentive pilots or lonely old men in hotel bars on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t my choice for the sportswriting to end, and I do miss it every now and then. But I wouldn’t go back. Not to the way it was, anyway. I haven’t missed a Thanksgiving or a Fourth of July or a New Year’s or a Halloween or any holiday since 2007. Having weekends off is like having 52 two-day vacations every year.

Tuesday morning, I’ll see the light in my sons’ eyes when they come downstairs and dig into their stockings. I’ll be home for Christmas.

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After we landed in Orlando on Christmas day, 2000 – I highly recommend first class flights, by the way – I rode in a rental car with the photographer and the columnist. The photographer drove and we took I-4 in record time. At the Tampa airport, I got into my car and drove home. It was around 2 o’clock Christmas afternoon when I walked into my house. There were maybe 20 in-laws there. They had already eaten. I hugged my wife and ate some leftovers, then opened some presents.

It was nice.

 

This Game’s Fun, Okay? Baseball’s Hall of Fame Conundrum

/ Carter Gaddis / 22 Comments
BBWAA Hall of Fame Voting

The letter from the National Baseball Hall of Fame that comes with the ballot.

I was fortunate enough to see Barry Bonds play in person in a handful of games during my tenure as a baseball writer. The first was in October 2003, when his San Francisco Giants lost a National League division playoff series to the eventual World Series champion Marlins in Miami. Bonds was two years removed from hitting 73 home runs, and nearly three years short of catching Henry Aaron. He was also two months away from giving what would turn out to be deceptive grand jury testimony in the BALCO case.

That first night in Miami, I stopped typing during batting practice to watch Bonds take his swings. I was absolutely certain I was watching one of the greatest hitters of all time, clear and cream or no clear and cream. The BP home runs he hit into the empty right-field stands at Joe Robbie Stadium were big. Big and breath-taking, like the Grand Canyon. Big and loud, like the Pacific Ocean.

Big like the stain left on baseball by performance-enhancing drugs.

I saw Roger Clemens pitch in person dozens of times. I saw him in a Blue Jays uniform, a New York Yankees uniform, an Astros uniform, a Tampa Yankees uniform (at a May 2007 rehab outing at Legends Field, live-blogged by yours truly) and a New York Yankees uniform again. He was no longer the Rocket by the time I picked up his career. Not really. But he was still Roger, and he was still a winner on the field, and I was absolutely certain I was watching one of the top five right-handed pitchers of all time whenever I saw him pitch.

Their respective perjury trials have begun to recede from memory (or, anyway, I had to look up the details). Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice – but not perjury, and served no jail time. Clemens, who was mentioned in the Mitchell Report, was charged with six felony counts of lying to Congress. After an initial mistrial, he was found not guilty on all six counts this past June.

So. Here we are, December 2012, the time of Hall of Fame reckoning for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

I am about to vote for the fifth time. On previous ballots, I already have left off the names of Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire because they used performance-enhancing drugs. They posted Hall of Fame numbers (particularly Palmeiro), but it’s not only about the numbers when it comes to voting for baseball’s Hall of Fame.

The reason I didn’t vote for them – the reason I am inclined, at the moment, not to vote for Bonds, Clemens or fellow first-year candidate Sammy Sosa – is the existence of rule No. 5 in the BBWAA Rules for Election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I’ve cited it before, and here it is again, in its entirety:

  • Voting – Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

If those three words – “integrity, sportsmanship, character” – were not there, Hall of Fame voting would be a much simpler matter of selecting my subjective criteria (and remember, it is a highly subjective process) and voting for the players who matched or exceeded those criteria.

No matter if I or the other 500-plus voters from the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) like it, the way a player conducted himself off the field matters. So does the way he treated the game when he played. There are those who would argue that even if the character issues are taken into account, the weight of on-the-field accomplishments might still warrant induction. I’m not sure that argument holds water, any more than the argument that it’s OK to base your selection only on the numbers and behavior before the perceived PED abuse took place. Look, how do we know when (or even if) these guys began to shoot up? When is the cutoff for Bonds? Before San Francisco? For Clemens? Before Toronto? That’s a slippery slope and it is a poor way to choose a Hall of Famer.

On what, then, are we to base our decisions?

Several players, including recent Hall inductees Andre Dawson and Barry Larkin, have come right out and said neither Bonds nor Clemens deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. They consider Bonds and Clemens (and, by extension, anyone who used PED) unworthy because they betrayed the game. It is particularly heinous because it was Bonds and Clemens, two of the game’s most gifted players, who succumbed to temptation for the sake of … what? A few more playing years (and many more millions of dollars)? A chance to break hallowed all-time records? An opportunity to burnish numbers that already might have warranted induction into the Hall of Fame?

But wait. Clemens has denied he ever used steroids or human growth hormone. Bonds has denied that he knowingly used BALCO’s infamous steroid compounds, the clear and the cream. Sammy Sosa has also denied using.* The question is, how do we, as voters, as journalists, know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these players are not telling the truth? Without evidence to the contrary (or a McGwire-like admission or test-related suspension), is it fair for us to indict these players by withholding a Hall of Fame vote that their raw numbers certainly deserve?

*Although, the fact that Sosa used a corked bat – against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, of all teams – and that corked bat shattered all over the Wrigley Field infield in 2003, and Devil Rays catcher Toby Hall pointed out the cork in the broken bat’s shards to the home plate umpire … to have witnessed that circus-like spectacle of cheating might make me think twice about voting for Sosa, anyway.

Always, I go back to the fifth rule for voting. Integrity. Sportsmanship. Character. I’m not trying to sound all sanctimonious here. I know that these are nebulous qualities. We all define them in our own way, and they mean more to some than to others when it comes to voting. I’ve thought a lot about these concepts since I became a voter five years ago. And how have they guided me in my selections? Here are my four previous ballots:

  • 2008: Bert Blyleven, Rickey Henderson, Tommy John, Dale Murphy, Jim Rice, Lee Smith.
  • 2009: Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Dale Murphy, Fred McGriff, Lee Smith.
  • 2010: Roberto Alomar, Jeff Bagwell, Bert Blyleven, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith.
  • 2011: Jeff Bagwell, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith.

We are allowed to vote for as many as 10 nominees. As you might have noticed, I did not vote for two players who made it in: Andre Dawson and Barry Larkin. I’ve written before, I loved both players when they were active, and admired them for their career excellence and off-the-field activities. I just did not feel like they quite crossed that threshold from superb to Hall of Fame. Yet, I don’t deny that they are Hall of Fame worthy now. Nor am I naïve enough to think that all of the players I vote for will get in. Murphy won’t, and this is his last year of eligibility. I think if Dawson and Jim Rice are Hall of Famers, Murphy certainly should be, too. And I’ll probably vote for him one last time. But I don’t expect him to make it.

As you can probably tell, the subjectivity of this process is a deep, winding rabbit hole. Why Fred McGriff, but not Larry Walker? Why Jeff Bagwell, but not Edgar Martinez? I could explain those decisions now, but I’ll save that for when I actually decide on my ballot for this year.

Because I have decided that in my fifth year as a voter, the advent of Bonds and Clemens on the ballot means it’s time for me to re-evaluate how I make my selections.

Did they cheat? I don’t know. Probably. But I don’t know.

Here’s a question I need to consider, and I hope all voters do, too: If Clemens, Bonds, McGwire and even Palmeiro were not Hall of Fame worthy in the eyes of Major League Baseball or the National Baseball Hall of Fame, why are they allowed to appear on the writers’ ballot? Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, two obvious Hall of Famers based on numbers alone, are banned for gambling ties. Yet, Bonds is officially the all-time home run king. Not Henry Aaron. And Roger Maris is consigned to long-ago history by all those apparently drug-aided 60- and 70-home run seasons by Bonds, McGwire and Sosa.

The question now is, if these players are still eligible, what right do I have* to keep them out of the Hall of Fame? I have to balance that with an equally important question: If we, the voting writers, don’t deny perceived cheaters the ultimate honor in baseball, who will?

I’ll be wrestling with that for the next couple of weeks. The deadline to file my ballot with the BBWAA is New Year’s Eve. Until then, I welcome any and all advice/comments. Just … please relax. Have a ball out here. This game’s fun, okay? Fun, God damn it.

Here are this year’s candidates: Sandy Alomar Jr., Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Roger Clemens, Jeff Conine, Steve Finley, Julio Franco, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Kenny Lofton, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jose Mesa, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Reggie Sanders, Curt Schilling, Aaron Sele, Lee Smith, Sammy Sosa, Mike Stanton, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Todd Walker, David Wells, Rondell White, Bernie Williams, Woody Williams.

*BBWAA members become voters after 10 consecutive years of membership. That’s like, 347 years in SEO Writer age. I was an active member as a sportswriter for the Tampa Tribune and as a freelance journalist from 1999-2009, and became an honorary member for life in 2010. Voting for the Hall of Fame is the last meaningful vestige of my career as a baseball writer, and I take the honor seriously. But it’s definitely fun, too.