Home Run Derby

Baseball players are a superstitious lot.   So it’s no wonder only a handful have ever donned unlucky #13 on their jersey.

In honor of this Friday the Thirteenth, Home Run Derby honors the men who haven’t been afraid to wear the “unlucky number.”  Without further adieu, here’s HRD’s All-Thirteen Team … and you guessed it – there’s thirteen of them.

Lance Parrish, Catcher

Big Wheel was an eight-time All Star, a six-time Silver Slugger, and won a Gold Glove at catcher for three straight seasons.  Only the second catcher to ever win a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger in the same season (1983).  He played for five different teams as #13, but I’ll always remember him as a Detroit Tiger.  In 1982 he threw out three runners in the All-Star game.

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Back in the mid-1980’s, thanks to a big push by First Lady Nancy Reagan, everyone was on a big “Don’t Do Drugs” kick.

Cocaine was the big scourge back then, both on the street and in MLB clubhouses.  

In 1983, the Kansas City Royals had four players sent to prison for trying to purchase Cocaine.  The 1985 Pittsburgh Drug Trials led MLB Commissioner Peter Uberroth to hand out fines or suspensions to eleven players in 1986.  It’s believed that the Hall of Fame candidacies of Tim Raines, Dave Parker and Keith Hernandez have all suffered because of their association with the trials (and drug use).

In order to help improve their image, MLB unleashed a big ol’ Anti-Drug campaign … complete with players (presumably drug-free) making Public Service Announcements telling you about the dangers of Drugs (specifically cocaine). 

Here’s four 1986 PSA’s featuring a quartet of future Hall of Famers.

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We’ve focused a lot lately on the top of the Hall of Fame ballot.  Well now, with the HoF results in and Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson (suck on it, Corky) elected to the Hall of Fame … let’s look at the bottom of the ballot.

Instead of wondering if someone will ever be voted into the Hall unanimously … let’s look at those who have been unanimously shut out of the Hall of Fame.   And I don’t mean players who went one-and done in their chance at the Hall.

I mean those players who couldn’t get a single vote during their chance on the ballot.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  Donut.  Not a sausage.  Bugger all.

This year (2009), the no-vote dishonor fell on Ron Gant, Dan Plesac, and Greg Vaughn. Not a single writer bit on any of them. Not even Corky Simpson.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has been tracking voters who didn’t receive a vote for the past 32 ballots.   During that time, there were 189 players who couldn’t gather up a single vote between them.  As you might imagine … there’s a few names that you’ve heard of among that group. 

Here’s some notable ones.

In 1991, Oscar Gamble couldn’t get a single voter to bet on him. 

You see … this is what’s wrong with the BBWAA. 

If that fabulous afro can’t get an obligatory vote from at least one BBWAA writer … it’s time for the entire institution to lose its voting rights.

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So our favorite no-talent hack (Corky Simpson) has company.

Twenty-Eight members of the BBWAA didn’t vote for Rickey Henderson on their ballots for the Hall of Fame.  Too bad for them that 511 writers had a bit of common sense and voted Henderson in along with Jim Rice.

We figured as much.  It’s not a shocker that 539 writers couldn’t agree that MLB’s all-time steals leader should be in the Hall of Fame. But we’re curious …

Who?  Who are other twenty-seven?  And Why?

My guess is that we’re not going to find out all those names.  But we will know some of them in the days to come.

Because some writers are going to see all the attention that Simpson’s “No vote” generated and is going to want some of his own – because in the world of sportswriting, there’s a general rule.  “It is better to be talked about, than not to be talked about.”  and “Even Bad publicity is good publicity.”  Ask Jay Mariotti. 

Maybe (hopefully) that writer won’t be afraid to say why he really left him off his ballot and not fall back on some BS cop-out that he simply “goofed.”

Meanwhile, Corky Simpson fired back at the internet in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review …

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Two days ago, we told you about Corky Simpson, the retired BBWAA writer who didn’t vote for Rickey Henderson on his 2009 Hall of Fame Ballot.

After Rob Neyer of ESPN, Sports Illustrated’s Extra Mustard, The Big Lead, Deadspin, and a whole slew of bloggers who picked up our lead in questioning Simpson’s glaring omission of MLB’s all-time steals leader from his 2008 Ballot and created an online lynch mob …

Well, Corky wants to say that if he could do it again … he’d vote for Rickey. 

Too little, too late in my book.

Simpson recanted to the Tucson Citizen (registration required) …

“First things first, would I vote for Rickey if I had it to do all over again?  Damn right, I would,” Simpson said.  “I had no idea my ballot would cause such an uproar.”

And again at InsideBayArea.com (which mentioned Home Run Derby’s HoF Vote Tracker but gave the wrong link) …

I screwed up on the Henderson nonvote,” said Simpson, who detailed his choices in a Dec. 10 column for the Green Valley News. “You get to vote on 10 and I only picked eight. I probably did it too quickly.”

“Seriously, he was a wonderful player and I simply goofed. I voted for eight deserving men. I could have picked two more — and I wish to heck I had.”

Unfortunately, it took the internets being set on fire for it to happen.  And unfortunately for Rickey Henderson and a lot of baseball fans who were wondering if he could be the first unanimous HoF inductee, you can’t hit recall on a ballot mailed to the Baseball Hall of Fame nearly a month ago. 

But when Simpson said he “had no idea” about the “uproar” that was to come by leaving a Baseball legend off his ballot … well, that wasn’t exactly true … 

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I’ve updated the 2009 Hall of Fame Vote Tracker with six more BBWAA writers’ votes.  We’re up to 38.

Writers joining the list are Phil Arvia, Phil Pepe, Mike Nadel, Steve Aschburner, Jack McCaffery, and Garry Brown.  All of them voted for Rickey Henderson, meaning Corky Simpson is still the only writer (that we know of) who doesn’t think MLB’s all-time steals leader belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Rickey Henderson is still above 97% of the vote and will probably finish with a higher percentage than that.  But even more interesting is the three-way logjam of Jim Rice, Andre Dawson, and Bert Blyleven at 68.4% of the vote.  Each one has a legit chance to make the Hall this year – but fans of Rice’s HoF final chance at enshrinement have to be concerned, as he’s tracking lower than he did in 2008.  But there’s over 500 ballots to go.

Curiously, Delaware County Daily Times writer Jack McCaffery is both the first writer to vote for the maximum of ten players and the first writer to vote for a write-in candidate.  That write-in was cast for Pete Rose. 

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It’s been no secret that Ron Santo desperately wants to get into the Hall of Fame.  But that nasty Veterans’ Committee just won’t let him in.  Even after the selection rules were changed after the 2007 elections (coincidentally or not) which gave him a better shot in 2008, he still wasn’t selected.  Then again, neither was anyone else.

A number of sportswriters have been stumped for years why Santo’s not in the Hall. 

Well, thanks to a Dentist’s advert on YouTube … we think we’ve figured it out.  And it was right under Santo’s nose.  Literally.

Ron Santo had bad teeth.  And I mean bad. 
Austin Powers Bad.
“Big Book of British Smiles” Bad.

And we all know that you need a great smile to get people to vote for you.

Don’t believe me? 
Check out these before and after closeups of Santo’s choppers …

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So I was putting together some research on which BBWAA members had published their ballots for the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame, trying to get a feel (albeit from a small sample size) of what the 2009 voting might look like. 

While I was compiling it, I kept noticing one name among every writer’s picks.

Rickey Henderson. 

Could it be unanimous?  Even in my small sampling of writers whose picks I could find on the internets?  No one has ever received every vote in the history of BBHoF voting.  Not Babe Ruth, not Ty Cobb, not Tom Seaver, not Willie Mays, not Jackie Robinson, not Nolan Ryan, not Cal Ripken, Jr., not Cy Young.

But every writer was putting Henderson on their ballot, usualy followed by the words “no-brainer.”  Could it be done?  Could Rickey make HoF history?  I was getting kinda excited.

And then, I got to the ballot of the Award-Winning Corky Simpson - who, you guessed it … didn’t vote for Rickey Henderson.

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