Who Can It Be Now? Ted Lyle Simmons was born on August 9, 1949, in Highland Park, Michigan. Simmons spent his youth in Southfield, Michigan, where he was a star in both football and baseball at Southfield High School. He was well known to major league scouts as a high school player, and his draft status in 1967 supported that. He was selected tenth overall in the 1967 draft by the St. Louis Cardinals. He held out for a short while to ensure that he could get sufficient money out of the Cardinals as a signing bonus. He used the threat of attending college over the Cardinals, saying in The Sporting News shortly after the draft that, "The contract will have to be big enough to make it worthwhile for me to pass up college. I'd have to say that I'd want about $50,000 -- although some people have told me it should be $75,000 and some say $100,000." He got his $50,000 that he asked for (which he told Daniel Okrent in Nine Innings was "more money than my family had ever seen"). As a result, despite having signed on the dotted line to do so, he did not go to college to play football for the University of Michigan. Instead, he used his baseball signing bonus to attend Michigan and, later, Wayne State, in the offseason. As Okrent mentions, being at the University of Michigan from September through April every year from 1968 through 1970 had a distinct effect on Simmons, creating in him a determination not to be seen "as merely a jock." UM in that turbulent time was greatly affected by the anti-Vietnam War activities, as these photos show, and it had an impact. Still, he signed soon enough in 1967 to play 53 games in rookie level and low-level Single-A baseball. It was enough to earn a promotion in 1968 to Modesto in the Advanced-A California League. Despite being 3.5 years younger than the average player in the league, Simmons dominated offensively -- hitting 28 HR, driving in 117, and slashing .331/.415/.570 and winning the California League MVP. That earned him his first call-up to the big leagues at the age of 19 in 1968, where he got a 4 plate-appearance cup-of coffee. So, at the age of 19 in 1969, he found himself amongst the grown men at Triple-A Tusla in the American Association. Different league but similar results -- 16 HR, 88 RBI, .317/.365/.495. He got another look in the big leagues as a result -- a 16 plate appearance stint. He'd made a mark on ownership with his play in the minor leagues and his short stints in the big leagues that circumstances in 1970 led to his being called up for good. Cardinals third-baseman Mike Shannon was forced to retire at age 30 due to glomerulonephritis (a condition that prevents the kidneys from filtering waste properly). Lacking a good internal replacement at third base, the Cards instead moved their multiple-time All-Star Joe Torre to third base (even though Torre had not played there in the majors before) and called up the 20-year-old Simmons. Simmons and St. Louis in the 1970s were synonymous. Simmons became well known for his unique interests in the arts and antiques -- even being featured in a 1978 Sports Illustrated article about him. That article mentioned that he was named a trustee for the St. Louis Art Museum in 1978 thanks in part to his knowledge on 18th century antiques and his position with the Cardinals. Something else that article mentioned is Simmons's defensive reputation. Despite it being a human interest puff piece in most regards, it states that Simmons was aware of the misconception that he was "no more than a mediocre catcher," citing to his huge passed ball totals in 1974 and 1975 (he had 28 passed balls, falling one short of tying the league's record in passed balls since 1900). Tim McCarver said Simmons was concentrating on his hitting while catching, which sounds like something Tim McCarver would say. That defensive reputation/ability is what led to his trade to Milwaukee. Whitey Herzog came to St. Louis before the 1980 season and came to the conclusion that the thirty-year-old Simmons -- who, by then, had caught in excess of 11,000 innings in his career -- was simply not going to be the catcher for his team in 1981. Herzog, who was also the Cardinals GM, signed his former Kansas City catcher (and former Brewer) Darrell Porter to catch and told Simmons that Simmons would shift to first base (with Keith Hernandez moving to the outfield). Simmons did not like that idea all that much, so he asked for a trade. That led to the blockbuster deal of the 1980 offseason. Herzog traded Simmons with the recently acquired Rollie Fingers (who was surplus to requirements in St. Louis thanks to Bruce Sutter's signing) along with Pete Vuckovich to the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for Sixto Lezcano, Lary Sorensen, Dave LaPoint, and David Green. While the Brewers gave away Lezcano (whom many thought was a rising star) and Green (whom many thought was the best prospect in the minor leagues), they received in return two Cy Youngs (Fingers in 1981 and Vuckovich in 1982) and a soon-to-be two-time Brewers All-Star (Simmons in 1981 and 1983). Simmons's stay in Milwaukee was a fruitful yet frustrating one. Yes, he got to the postseason twice in his five seasons as a Brewer, but both trips ended in losses and the 1982 trip ended in a loss in his adopted hometown of St. Louis. In many respects, a lot of the issues in 1982 could be placed at Simmons's feet, as he batted a poor .174/.321/.435 in the World Series (4-23 with 5 walks and two homers). Still, watching his former team win both in 1982 and in 1985 had to be somewhat hurtful. The Brewers decided to move on from Simmons after the 1985 season, and Simba moved to Atlanta as a pinch-hitter who could catch or play first or third in a pinch. Moving back to the NL gave him the opportunity to see the Cards more frequently, and it led to his post-retirement career as well. In August of 1988, Simmons knew he would retire after the season. Before a game with the Cardinals in St. Louis, Simmons spoke with his old pal Whitey Herzog about what was next. Whitey immediately asked Simmons if he would be interested in becoming the Cardinals farm director. That is what Simmons did after the 1988 season and his retirement. Freeze-Frame It's not an exact fit for this category, but the story needs to be put somewhere in Simmons's biography. During the 1970s, Simmons's son John had a baseball-crazy best friend named Jon Hamm. Yes, the Jon Hamm of "Mad Men" fame. Thanks to that tie, Jon Hamm's first catcher's mitt was given to him by Simmons -- a Rawlings mitt shipped direct from the factory. Hamm recognized the irony of the 1982 Series as well, saying, "My favorite baseball memory is my best friend's baseball disaster." A Few Minutes with Tony L. Simmons's entire life has been spent in baseball. Simmons moved from the Cardinals front office to become the GM, but he stepped aside in 1993 after suffering a heart attack at the age of 44. That led him to stop smoking, start exercising, and eat better so, as he put it, he would not be "dead by the time you are 50." He then worked in scouting and/or in the front office for Cleveland, San Diego, Seattle and Atlanta. In addition, he was the bench coach for the Milwaukee Brewers for the 2008 season -- their first trip back to the postseason since 1982. Of course Simmons was one of the guys who played a major role for my 1982 Milwaukee Brewers team. As a catcher as a kid, Simmons was a personal favorite of mine -- he and Gary Carter. But, overall, Simmons probably does not rank much higher than 7th or 8th in terms of the favorite players on that team behind at least Cecil Cooper, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Ben Oglivie, Jim Gantner, and Gorman Thomas (and maybe Rollie Fingers too). The major question that gets asked these days is if Ted Simmons belongs in the Hall of Fame. My answer is a resounding yes. Looking to the "JAWS" scores from Baseball Reference, Simmons is the highest ranked catcher who is eligible for induction but has not yet been inducted. He's listed as the 10th best catcher overall, and only the recently-retired Joe Mauer ranks higher without being inducted. Simmons's main problem is similar to what Tim Raines went through. Simmons played at the same time as the 1st, 2nd, and 4th best catchers in baseball history -- Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, and Carlton Fisk. Bench debuted in 1967, Simmons in 1968, Fisk in 1969, and Carter in 1974. Even if Simmons was the poorest defensively amongst those four, there is a good argument that he is the best or at worst second best offensive catcher of the four. The fact that Simmons played at a time when the game's best ever catchers played, however, should not be a reason to keep him out. Simmons is a Hall of Famer, and the voters made a mistake (and continue to make a mistake) in keeping him out.
Who Can It Be Now? Gaylord Jackson Perry was born on September 15, 1938, in Williamston, North Carolina. His parents, Evan and Ruby, were tenant farmers mainly in tobacco, corn, and peanuts for money and then vegetables and animals for food. Gaylord and his brother Jim both worked the fields as early as their 7th birthdays, helping their father with the work around the farm. As his biography on the North Carolina History Project website mentions, Gaylord was an imposing figure in high school, as his 6'4" frame held 200 pounds of muscle toned by years of working in the fields. He competed at every level and in every sport through Williamston High School, though baseball was always his best sport. As it turned out, Tom Sheehan and the San Francisco Giants won over Perry and his family with the largest contract they had ever given a high school kid -- a $70,000, three-year contract in 1958. After he signed with the Giants, they sent him to Class-C St. Cloud for his first season, where his teammates included John Orsino, Bobby Bolin, Moose Stubing, and Matty Alou. He pitched well enough at the age of 19 in St. Cloud to be promoted in 1959 to the Double-A Texas League. His numbers in Corpus Christi were not great, so he was back in Double-A in 1960 with Rio Grande Valley. There, at the age of 21, Perry was learning his craft. In 3 fewer innings (191 in 1959, 188 in 1960), Perry gave up 54 fewer hits and 8 fewer homeruns. Though he walked 8 more batters, his ERA improved from 4.05 in 1959 to 2.82 in 1960. That improvement earned him an inning at Triple-A Tacoma, where he was an incredible 7 years younger than the average player. It also earned him a direct assignment to Triple-A in 1961. He made the team directly out of spring training in 1962. He pitched sporadically at best -- 3 times in April, 4 times in May -- so the team made the decision after a number of shaky appearances to send him back down to Triple-A Tacoma in 1962. Once again, just as he had improved greatly on a second trip through Double-A, he improved his peripherals in Triple-A in 1962 -- striking out more batters, giving up fewer hits, and improving his K/BB ratio. Yes, his BB/9 jumped, but once again it was a positive change. In 1963, the Giants used Perry as a swingman and middle reliever. He started 4 games, finished 6, saved 2, and won 1 in 31 appearances. Indeed, over his first four seasons from 1962 to 1965, Perry served in that swingman's role, racking up a less-than-impressive 24-30 record with a 3.68 ERA with 56 starts in 135 appearances. But, from 1966 until 1971 -- the last 6 years of Perry's San Francisco career, things changed for Gaylord for the better. He was put into the Giants rotation, making perhaps one or two relief appearances a year, and he thrived. From the age of 27 in 1966 to age 32 in 1971, Perry racked up 110 wins against 79 losses, 113 complete games in 227 starts, 19 shutouts, 2 saves, and a 2.75 ERA while walking 425 and striking out 1209. In that time, Perry was an All-Star twice -- in 1966, which was his first 20-win season (21-8) and again in 1970, when Perry went 23-13, started 41 games, completed 23, had 5 shutouts, pitched 328-2/3 innings, and finished second in the Cy Young Award voting (deservedly so) behind Bob Gibson. After the 1971 season, however, the Giants decided to cash in on Perry and trade their almost 33-year-old starter to the Cleveland Indians with middle infielder Frank Duffy in exchange for a younger pitcher -- "Sudden" Sam McDowell. McDowell is nearly four years younger than Perry, and he was coming off a string of pretty impressive years himself -- including 6 All-Star Appearances. McDowell was known for being a strikeout pitcher, of course, and at the time of the trade he was 17th on the all-time strikeout list with 2,159. Unfortunately for the Giants, all the mileage on McDowell's arm caught up with McDowell in 1972 and 1973 -- to the point of where the Giants literally just sold his contract in June of 1973 to the Yankees. McDowell was released in mid-1975 by the Pirates, and at age 33 was out of baseball. Perry, on the other hand, was 33 years old but still 12 years away from retirement. In fact, Perry still had two Cy Young Awards in his future, including his first one in Cleveland in 1972 in a season in which he edged out Wilbur Wood for the crown. Perry had an incredible 24-16 record with a 1.92 ERA and an unbelieveable 11.2 WAR. Even so, Perry began a peripatetic existence in the 1970s. It seems like all the teams he pitcher for were afraid that his expiration date would arrive. The Indians kept him through 1975, when, on June 13, he went to the Texas Rangers in exchange for Jim Bibby, Jackie Brown, Rick Waits, and $100,000. He pitched in Arlington until the end of the 1977 season, when the Rangers sent him to the San Diego Padres in exchange for Dave Tomlin and $125,000. He celebrated getting out of the Texas heat by winning his second Cy Young Award in 1978 in San Diego. He was the runaway winner with his 21-6 record and 2.73 ERA, though this time WAR says that Phil Niekro (10.4), Vida Blue (6.2), and Burt Hooton (5.3) all were more deserving of the title than Perry (4.3). Seeing Perry win the Cy Young Award in 1978 apparently convinced the Rangers that Perry still had gas in the tank after the 1979 season. So, in February of 1980, the Padres sent Perry with outfielder Tucker Ashford and a minor leaguer to the Padres in exchange for Willie Montanez. He did not pitch badly in Texas; to the contrary, at age 41, he pitched fairly well. But, the Rangers cashed in on Perry and the remaining time on his contract that year to trade him to the New York Yankees for Ken Clay and a minor leaguer. The Yankees appeared to be trying to form the oldest starting rotation in the history of baseball, pairing Perry (41 at midseason) with Jim Kaat (also 41), Luis Tiant (aged 39), Tommy John (37), Rudy May (35), and the kids -- Ron Guidry (29), and Tom Underwood (26). The Yankees let Perry leave in free agency after the 1982 season. He signed a one-year, $300,000 contract with the Atlanta Braves at the age of 42. That signing paired Perry with a fellow "old guy" in Phil Niekro, who was also 42 (Gaylord was older by 8 months). Perry did not pitch badly in Atlanta, but he gave up a ton of hits and led the league in hits allowed. Perhaps that was because he was around the plate all the time -- he walked just 1.4 batters per nine innings. The Braves released Perry immediately after the 1981 season ended. At that point, Perry was sitting on 297 wins, and it took quite some time for anyone to give him a chance to get to 300. Eventually, though, on March 5, 1982, the Seattle Mariners gave him that opportunity. The 43-year-old pitched 216-2/3 innings in 1982 with a 10-12 record and a 4.40 ERA (League average: 4.07). Most importantly, though, Perry won #300 on May 6, 1982 against the New York Yankees:
Another incident in 1982 was a first for Perry: he received the only suspension of his entire career for doctoring the baseball. Perry claimed that the umpire, Dave Phillips, "lied" about the ball being doctored. As Perry put it:
If there was anything on the ball, he (Phillips) put it there. He asked for the ball. Why would I throw the umpire the ball with something on it? I threw it directly to him because he wanted to look at it. I've been in the game too long to do anything that stupid.
Perry pitched into 1983 for the Mariners, but struggled badly and earned his unconditional release on June 27, 1983. The Kansas City Royals gave him a chance to show he wasn't completely done, and signed him on July 6. His 14 starts there were nondescript and didn't exactly show that Perry had anything left. Perry's presence with the Royals, however, did allow him to take part in one last bit of baseball lore: The infamous George Brett "Pine Tar Game." For those who don't know the story: On July 24, 1983, George Brett hit a towering home run at Yankee Stadium off Yankee closer Goose Gossage to put the Royals ahead 5-4. Billy Martin had been tipped off by Graig Nettles two weeks before that Brett had put a ton of pine tar on his bat and that the pine tar probably exceeded the 18-inches-from-the-handle limitation included in the rulebook. The Yankees stormed out of the dugout to challenge the bat. They screamed at the batboy working for the Royals to bring the bat out to let the umpire measure the pine tar. The umpire, Tim McClelland, measured the pine tar on home plate and saw that the tar extended far beyond the 18 inches allowed. McClelland disallowed the home run. And Brett, to put it nicely, lost his shit.
Perry's role came next. While Brett was being restrained by approximately half of Manhattan, Perry and coach Rocky Colavito worked a plan where Colavito distracted the umpire McClelland and Perry sneaked up from behind and grabbed the bat. Perry relayed the bat to Hal McRae who passed it along to another player, but them McClelland intervened and caught them with the bat in the dugout runway. Indeed, Fleer commemorated Perry's pilfering with a card in its 1984 set:
With his role in history safe both from that incident and, more importantly, with his 314 career wins, Perry retired after the 1983 season. Mustache Check: Nope.
Family Ties Most people are aware that Gaylord Perry's brother Jim Perry had a very successful career himself as a major league pitcher. Jim won the AL Cy Young in 1970 before Gaylord won in 1972. Gaylord's nephew (Jim's son) Chris Perry played golf at Ohio State in the early 1980s and then played on and off on the PGA Tour from 1985 to 1992, then lost his tour card for a couple of years before winning the Nike Tour Player of the Year Award in 1994 and rejoining the PGA tour from 1995 to 2001. I mean, Gaylord and Jim are so old that Chris Perry, who was born in 1961, is actually playing on the "Champions" (i.e., the Senior PGA Tour) Tour now. The World According to Garp In 1974, Gaylord wrote the book Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession. It makes me a bit confused that Perry would continue to avoid questions about whether or not he threw a spitball after writing such a book. His position seems to be that they didn't catch him, so he was okay. Trivial Pursuit A couple of fun tidbits of trivia popped up about Gaylord Perry in my research. First, he started the baseball program at Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina. Second, his first major league home run is the subject of a Snopes.com inquiry as to whether he fulfilled manager Alvin Dark's prophecy in 1964 or his own prophecy in 1963 that "they'll put a man on the moon before [Perry] hits a home run." Surprisingly, Perry hit his first major league home run on July 20, 1969 -- just a short time after Neil Armstrong took one small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind. Next, Gaylord had a "This Is SportsCenter" Commercial many years ago in which he made light of his Vaseline-smudged reputation. Finally, my favorite random tidbit comes from a combination of the North Carolina history website and the Campbell University athletics site. Gaylord Perry attended Campbell, though there is no record of Gaylord ever pitching there. Apparently in obeisance to Perry's attendance at the school and his baseball success, the Campbell Camel's mascot is named "Gaylord." Click on that link and book the camel for an event -- it's cheaper than golfing with Desi Relaford. A Few Minutes with Tony L. Perry seemed really old in 1982. I guess since I'm now 42 myself, his pitching at that age in the major leagues seems far more impressive in retrospect. So, the elephant in the room with Perry is pretty simple: does he belong in the Hall of Fame? There's no question that Perry's statistical biography provides him with a strong case for enshrinement in Cooperstown. Let's get that out of the way now. But, he did it on the back of a spitter. Should we reconsider that enshrinement? The excellent Joe Posnanski argued on his blog last December that Gaylord Perry was a much better pitcher than Nolan Ryan. If you look at that question statistically and at Ryan critically, which Posnanski does, it's pretty clear that Perry was better at not beating himself with allowing stolen bases, throwing wild pitches, walking people, and fielding his position. The question Posnanski glosses over, however, is one worth considering: is an admitted cheater whose success comes in part from his cheating someone who belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Posnanski poses the question as such:
Consider this: What if there was a new drug that allowed a pitcher to throw a fastball that dropped unnaturally at the very last second? Then, let's say that pitcher who openly took the drug year after year won two Cy Young Awards, struck out more than 3,500 batters and won 300 games. Would you elect that pitcher to the Hall of Fame?
Posnanski skirts this question by responding, "Somehow, throwing a spitball doesn't seem as unprincipled as taking PEDs. There's something roguish about spitballers . . . ." From there, he argues that sign stealing, bat corking, or even taking greenies/amphetamines is engaging in behavior in which others disapprove but who is nonetheless likeable or attractive. This logic falls apart a bit for me. I mean, wasn't Sammy Sosa a very likeable, fun-loving player? Posnanski brushes Perry's spitballing aside by saying that his denials were "always given with a little wink" and that Perry had his daughter programmed at age 5 to tell anyone who asked that all Perry was throwing was "a hard slider." Perry has been asked the very same question -- why isn't a spitter the same as a PED? His response was a non-response, as you'd expect. When he was asked by Syracuse.com, in terms of ethics and cheating, how much difference there is between throwing a spitter and using steroids, his response was: "There's a tremendous amount. You try things, you try to improve (in looking for a small edge). Back in the 1960s and 70s, we played hard. We had a good time." That's a pretty meaningless answer. In other interviews, Gaylord shrugs it off as having fun in the game and fun with each other. He claims that he would roll a soaked ball to Sparky Anderson, and Sparky would just laugh. Perry claims that there is "no comparison" between spitters and corked bats and steroid use. He says, "I bent the rules, I didn't break them. Cork in the bat is much different than steroids." Okay, but when Michael Pineda was ejected for having pine tar on his body in April of 2014, Perry said, "Of course pine tar is a performance-enhancing substance. Why do you think so many pitchers are using it? It absolutely helps your sinkers to sink better and breaking pitches to break better." On a some levels, Harold Hutchison of the National Review has it correct -- Gaylord Perry should be ejected from the Hall of Fame for his cheating. My agreement with him has nothing to do with the claim at the bottom of his article that he is a "long-suffering Brewers fan" but more with the moral equivalency involved. However, my conclusion goes the other way. I believe strongly that the players of the "steroid era" -- who were not banned from baseball in any way as a result of their steroid use, so don't use Joe Jackson or Pete Rose for arguments here -- belong in the Hall of Fame so long as their resumes support being in the Hall. Barry Bonds belongs. Mark McGwire belongs. Sammy Sosa belongs. Roger Clemens -- though I can't stand the guy generally -- absolutely belongs in the Hall of Fame. As does Gaylord Perry.
Who Can It Be Now? It's still Carlton Ernest Fisk. This card always perplexed me as a youth because it was about the only card in the set that is properly displaying horizontally -- as above -- rather than vertically:
When we left off last week at the end of Fisk's Red Sox career and at the start of his White Sox career, I mentioned that the contract to which the White Sox and Fisk agreed looked like it had the potential to be an albatross around the White Sox's collective necks due to its length and Fisk's age. There is no doubt, though, that the contract turned out well for both Fisk and for the Sox. The five seasons on that initial contract were five of Fisk's most productive years. He averaged 125 games a season, 21 HR, 69 RBI, 10 SB, and slashed at .258/.332/.454. The most productive season of the five by WAR was 1983 (26 HR, 86 RBI, .289/.355/.518) -- a year in which Fisk finished third in the MVP race behind Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray and helped lead the White Sox to the ALCS where they lost to those Orioles. After the 1985 season, Fisk signed back up with the White Sox for two seasons. He re-signed with the Sox for four more seasons before the 1988 season, re-signed for one year after the 1991 season, and then signed again in 1993. During his much of his White Sox career, however, Fisk had a rocky relationship with White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf. The issues may have started back in 1985, when the White Sox were trying to sign Fisk to a contract and then trade him to the New York Yankees. For the Sox to trade Fisk, they needed his permission, and he would not give it freely. Indeed, both he and Don Baylor (for whom Fisk was to be traded) wanted money to waive their no-trade clauses. That never happened, so the Sox were content to swap Ron Hassey and Britt Burns instead. Later, in January, Fisk simply re-signed with the White Sox since, after all, this was the era of collusion. Despite all that, Fisk did not complain about the size of his contract. He felt that renegotiating a contract was a character flaw and that those guys wanting to renegotiate were crybabies. By his last two seasons in baseball, however, the White Sox had committed to starting Ron Karkovice. Fisk played only 62 games in 1992 (aged 44), and his hitting was commensurate with being a backup catcher -- .229/.313/.309. Recognizing Fisk's decline, the White Sox organization wanted to protect itself -- and its future -- by signing Fisk to a minor-league deal for the 1993 season. Fisk balked at signing the deal because it was a minor-league contract, whereas the organization pointed out that that was a technicality so that the Sox would not have to use a 40-man roster spot on Fisk. The result: Jerry Reinsdorf took to the media. He was quoted as saying:
He's 45 years old; it's time he grew up. I'm sick and tired of him acting like a baby. He believes he has been mistreated, but nobody has ever been catered to here more than Carlton Fisk. He's a prima donna. He must think he's Michael Jackson.
Here's a guy who doesn't like anybody and is always unhappy, yet no one ever writes it. Everyone is afraid of him. I don't know why.
Fisk wanted to hang around one more year at the age of 45 for at least one personal reason, though, so eventually he caved and signed a contract. The reason, of course, was that he wanted to set the record for most appearances at catcher. On June 22, 1993, he did that, making his 2,226th appearance behind the plate in his major league career. That game served as a going away party of sorts, as his White Sox teammates chipped in and bought him a motorcycle, which Bo Jackson drove onto the field for him. Fisk's wife Linda also received a diamond bracelet from the team, and the White Sox made a $25,000 donation to the Chicago Botanic Garden. Then, a week later, the White Sox were in Cleveland to play the Indians when the decided that that was the time to release Fisk. As the AP wire story put it, that move was "long expected because of the 45-year-old's feud with management over his diminished playing time as he chased the ironman catching record." So, one game past Bob Boone, Fisk was done. The hurt over his treatment in 1993 -- and possibly his New England background -- led Fisk to choose to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as a member of the Boston Red Sox. He and the White Sox eventually patched things up, however -- first, retiring his number 72 (the reverse of the 27 he wore in Boston, which is also retired) in 1997, then erecting a statue outside Comiskey Park/U.S. Cellular Field of him in 2005. Finally, in 2008, the White Sox hired Fisk as a "team ambassador," a position in which Fisk still serves today. Mustache Check: See, I let 5 days go by and I forget to cover this. Of course, it doesn't matter. Family Ties In my haste last week to write the long tale of all of Carlton's athletic nieces and nephews, I neglected to mention Carlton's own daughter, Carlyn. She played volleyball at the University of Illinois-Chicago in the early 1990s even though she was just 5'7" tall.
Freeze-Frame Carlton appeared in a 2009 documentary called The Lost Son of Havana about former Red Sox pitcher and teammate Luis Tiant. The documentary featured Tiant returning to Cuba after 46 years in exile. A Few Minutes with Tony L. It seems these second cards of Hall of Famers are more difficult to write than the first ones are. Or, at least they take longer. So, today, two items. First, an interesting tidbit about Carlton Fisk's most famous TV moment. Everyone knows the clip:
The interesting tidbit to me is that this homerun changed the way that TV covered sports wholly by happenstance. As reported at The Sporting Newsin April of 2012, up to that time, the cameras focused on the ball and the game play. Player reactions were ignored. But everyone knows Fisk's reaction -- with him waving the ball fair -- because of a rat. The cameraman, Lou Gerard, tells this story:
There were some rats running around. With Fisk coming up, Harry Coyle, who was the director at the time, he told me, "Lou, you have to follow the ball if he hits it." I said, "Harry, I can't, I've got a rat on my leg that's as big as a cat. It's staring me in the face. I'm blocked by a piece of metal on my right." So he said, "What are we going to do?" I said, "How about if we stay with Fisk, see what happens?"
The second item is simply whether Carlton Fisk belongs in the Hall of Fame. Stories in 1993 -- such as this one from the Chicago Tribune-- took it as a fait accompli that Fisk was an automatic for induction when his time came around. Bill James's statistical measures for induction are not as convinced. The "Black Ink" measure of leading the league in categories results in Fisk getting just 1 point (average HOFer -- 27). The "Gray Ink" measure is similarly lukewarm, with Fisk totaling 54 points for finishing in the top 10 in offensive categories -- and the average HOFer is around 144 points. On the other hand, the James Hall of Fame Monitor puts Fisk at 120, with a likely HOFer at 100; the James Hall of Fame Standards has him at 49 (average HOFer is 50). JAWS is kinder to Fisk, in large part due to the fact that JAWS compares him to catchers. Fisk also was helped by some intangible measures -- retiring as the all-time leader in home runs among catchers (since passed by Mike Piazza) and as the all-time leader in games played at catcher (since passed by Ivan Rodriguez). It's difficult to believe that Fisk came up just two years after Johnny Bench and 5 years before Gary Carter -- Fisk retired after both of them. Fisk's numbers place him squarely third of those three in the conversation of "best ever" at the position. Still, being third of the three best of all time -- perhaps now behind Ivan Rodriguez -- is nothing to sneeze at. While I don't think it was ever a "no-brainer", I do believe that Carlton Fisk is a deserving member of the Hall of Fame. It does not matter if I liked the guy or not -- he was an excellent, though irascible, player who always gave everything he had to win. He made his teams better -- and the stats prove this. So, yes, Carlton Fisk is an easy HOFer.
Who Can It Be Now? Thomas Edward John was born on May 22, 1943, in Terre Haute, Indiana. Tommy is 71 years old, meaning that he avoided the entry draft and, instead, was signed by the Cleveland Indians out of Gerstmeyer High School in Terre Haute (a school which no longer exists). He had been a high school basketball star and, according to his SABR biography, he was recruited by none other than the noted University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. When John first signed in 1961 -- again showing how long ago it was -- he was assigned to Class D Dubuque in the Midwest League. He pitched well there, though he had some control issues. He moved up to Triple-A Jacksonville in the International League as a 19-year-old for the second half of the 1962 season, where he made 8 appearances and 7 starts in a league in which John averaged being nearly 7-1/2 years younger than everyone else. According to John, he had no idea how to be a pitcher at this point in his career, and started learning only in 1962 from a player-coach in the Indians system named Steve Jankowski in Single-A. From Jankowski, John learned the classic art of pitching to contact and saving the 100% effort pitches for key points in the game when it was needed rather than throwing at 100% all the time. His performance in Double-A Charleston in 1963 -- a 9-2 record, a 1.61 ERA, 12 walks and 45 strikeouts in 95 innings -- earned him a promotion back to Jacksonville in 1963. He did not pitch badly there, and so the Indians gave him a late season cup of coffee that year. He yo-yoed between Triple-A Portland and Cleveland in 1964, getting sent down in mid-July after getting lit up for 11 runs (10 earned) in 3-1/3 innings in his last three appearances for the Indians. John's effectiveness may have been compromised by John trying to please Hall of Famer and pitching coach Early Wynn, who told John that John needed to learn a slider to go with the curveball and fastball he already threw. To throw the slider, John made adjustments to his delivery which threw off his control. After the 1964 season, Indians GM Gabe Paul tried to undo the unpopular 1960 trade engineered by Frank "Trader" Lane which sent Rocky Colavito to the Tigers in exchange for Harvey Kuenn. Sportswriter Terry Pluto wrote about this -- and the ensuing years of misery that followed -- in his book The Curse of Rocky Colavito. Indeed, one of the parts of the curse was that getting Colavito back caused the Indians to trade John. In a three-way deal consummated on January 20, 1965, Tommy John, Tommy Agee, and John Roman were sent to the Chicago White Sox by the Indians. The White Sox sent the Indians Cam Carreon (Mark Carreon's dad). The third team, the Kansas City Athletics, received Fred Talbot, Mike Hershberger, and Jim Landis from the White Sox and then sent Colavito to the Indians. John spent 7 years on Chicago's South Side, putting up a good ERA -- 2.95 (ERA+ of 117, putting him 17% better than league average) -- but only a fair-to-middling 82-80 record. He was named to the American League All-Star team in 1968 and pitched a scoreless 2/3 of an inning in the AL's 1-0 loss. Still, the White Sox of the late 1960s had declined significantly in John's time with the team -- going from the 2nd place team with a 95-67 record of 1965 to their low point of 56-106 in 1970 (a team so bad that they finished 9 games behind both the Kansas City Royals and the Milwaukee Brewers -- two teams that had come into existence the previous season). While the Sox had bounced back somewhat in 1971, it probably was a welcome change of scenery in many respects in December of 1971 when the White Sox sent John to the Los Angeles Dodgers with Steve Huntz in exchange for mercurial third baseman Dick Allen. With the Dodgers, John enjoyed three solid years in 1972 through 1974. He had an injury issue that shortened his 1972 season: bone chips in his elbow. Today, we would see this issue and likely would start thinking that the pitcher was walking a fine line with his ulnar collateral ligament. Then, it was a procedure to clean out the elbow for John in hopes that he could pitch without pain the next season. And he did pitch without pain in 1973 and into 1974. In fact, he started out so well in 1974 -- a 13-3 record -- that John and his wife were certain that New York Mets manager Yogi Berra (as the manager for the All-Star Game for the National League) was going to name John to the All-Star team. Sally John told the story to the AP in 1976:
Tommy came home from the ballpark that night [of July 16, 1974] with huge ol' cow eyes. It's the only time I've ever seen him angry. I don't think anyone realizes how much the snub hurt him. I hate Yogi Berra to this day for that. I know that's bad for a Christian to say, but Yogi Berra cannot even be considered a human being after doing that.
Okay, Sally, sit down and relax. The next night, though, things changed even more to the worse for Tommy -- it was the night that he snapped his UCL. Dr. Frank Jobe was at the game for the Dodgers, as he always was, as the team doctor. After all the diagnoses were completed and everyone knew that John had torn the UCL, Tommy pushed Jobe to come up with something for him to be able to pitch again. As Jobe recalled in 2000:
"You have to understand," Jobe says now, "there was no known procedure to fix something like that. But Tommy told me, 'You've got to do something. I don't care what it is, but fix me.'" . . . "I have to give Tommy credit. I might not have taken on his case if he hadn't pushed me so hard."
So, on September 25, 1974, Jobe took a 6-inch strip of tendon from John's right arm and used it to replace and fix John's left elbow. Complications arose. A second, secret surgery took place in December of 1974 to clear up scar tissue that had formed around John's ulnar nerve and caused his left hand to curl up into a claw. John missed the entirety of the 1975 season rehabilitating his arm. If the surgery had not worked and his career was over, he would have been just another 32-year-old former pitcher with a sore arm who finished his career with a 2.97 ERA, a 124-106 record, and good stories to tell his children and grandchildren. Instead, he came back in 1976. He enlisted the aid of his teammate and kinesiologist Mike Marshall and Dr. Jobe and rebuilt his mechanics. As was said in a 1984 interview with Robert Markus of the Chicago Tribune:
When he was just starting as a pitcher in high school, John explained, his coaches told him he was throwing the ball across his body and "that it was the worst thing in the world. They told me I had to do what they called 'open up.' I worked and worked to 'open up.'
But that put a lot of strain on the elbow and could have been the reason for the injury. In rehabilitation, I did a lot of talking with Dr. [Frank] Jobe and Mike Marshall and found that throwing across the body was not as bad as people said it was back in 1961. In fact, it's a pretty good way to throw effectively.
It clearly worked for John. He enjoyed his finest seasons in the major leagues in the years 1976 through 1980. In 1976, he ran out of gas down the stretch and went from 10-1 to 10-10. Despite the 10-10 record at a time when win-loss record mattered a lot, John was named the National League Comeback Player of the Year in 1976. As his former teammate Mike Marshall put it, "At that moment [of John's first start on April 16, 1976], Tommy John became the comeback player of the year." From 1977 through 1980, though, John put up impressive numbers for any pitcher -- whether working on a reconstructed elbow or not, whether aged 34 through 37 or not. He put up an 80-35 record, a 3.12 ERA (ERA+ of 124), gave up just 45 homers in 975 innings, made the All-Star team three times, finished as the runner up in the Cy Young Award race twice, and even garnered attention for MVP. He also swapped his Dodger whites for the pinstripes of the New York Yankees after the 1978 season when the Dodgers refused to meet his demands in free agency. John was a regular in the post-season between 1977 and 1982. He missed out on pitching in the post-season in 1979 only because the Orioles pipped the Yankees to the AL East Title that season. In 1982, he pitched for the Angels against the Brewers in the ALCS, winning game one but taking the loss in game four. He stayed with the Angels until 1985 when, at the age of 42, the Angels released him. His career was not done yet. The Oakland A's picked him up for the rest of that season but did not sign him after that. In 1986, then, John entered the season without a team. Surprisingly, however, on May 2, 1986, the New York Yankees gave John another shot. John got a bit lucky -- a 2.93 ERA v. a 4.17 FIP shows that -- but it led the Yankees to keep him on board until the end of May in 1989. Shortly after his 46th birthday, the Yankees released John. Mustache Check: No whiskers for Tommy John here. Sorry Night Owl. Trivial Pursuit We all know now that Tommy John was the first pitcher to undergo the tendon-to-ligament transplant surgery that Dr. Jobe pioneered in 1974. According to Tommy John himself on Twitter, the second pitcher to have the surgery performed was Brent Strom. Strom's career did not turn out as well as John's did, however. I'm assuming that he underwent the surgery in 1977 since he missed 1978 entirely. Strom never made it back to the major leagues. I wonder if pitchers today would be as quick to get the surgery if Strom and not John had the surgery first. Bonus Trivia: According to his SABR biography, Tommy John enjoyed a 26-year career in major league baseball. The only two players to have longer careers of 27 years each were Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson. Totally Gnarly John decided to retire in 1989 rather than trying to hook on with another club. He jokes today that his decision to retire came about from the fact that Mark McGwire got two hits off him. McGwire's father was a dentist in Southern California who counted Tommy John as a patient, so, as John claims to have said, "When your dentist's kid starts hitting you, it's time to retire!" Not to be a spoilsport, but that's a better line than it is a truth. After all, if giving up hits to Mark McGwire was John's impetus for retiring, he waited three years too long. In an August 24, 1986 game at Yankee Stadium, then third baseman Mark McGwire went 3-for-5 against John. In fact, McGwire's first inning double off Tommy John was McGwire's first major league hit. I think he should have used Novocaine. Bonus Gnarliness: If you have a spare $1,295 laying around, you can purchase a limited edition print directly from Tommy John's website. The print features four different MRI photos of Tommy's UCL ligament signed both by "Patient Zero," Tommy John and the Late Dr. Frank Jobe. Proceeds go to two different organizations: the "Let's Do It Foundation," an organization whose goal is to end the need for Tommy John Surgery and the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. The second organization reflects the fact that John's youngest son Taylor committed suicide by a prescription drug overdose in 2009. A Few Minutes with Tony L. This entry has taken a ton of time to write in large part because Tommy John pitched for 26 years, had a groundbreaking surgery, and generally is a nice Indiana boy who married a college cheerleader. It's tough to make calls as to what to include when there is literally too much information. I mean, he wrote a book. He was traded in 1982. He managed in the minor leagues. He's engaged on social media. There's a lot going on here. That said, Tommy John to me was and is a Dodger because that is when he first came into my consciousness as a baseball player. The fact is, though, that John pitched 8 years for the Yankees and 7 years for the White Sox versus 6 years for the Dodgers. The question that has to be raised about John, though, is the obvious one: is he a Hall of Famer? It's a very close call and it depends on how much "credit" you give to him for being Dr. Jobe's Patient Zero, I think.
Before his surgery, John was a pretty good pitcher. Certainly, he had some good years for some bad White Sox teams in the late 1960s, but his totalled stats for that period are good but not great: 124 W, 106 L, 2.97 ERA (3.16 FIP), 28 shutouts, 1273 strikeouts (5.3 K/9) versus 633 walks (2.6 BB/9). His average season was a 10-9 record with 180 innings pitched. In those days, that would be a low innings total for a starter. After his surgery, John turned into a total "pitch to contact" innings eater. He played with better teams, however, and that shows in his stats: 164-125 record (18 shutouts), 3.66 ERA (3.56 FIP), 972 strikeouts in 2544-2/3 innings (3.4 K/9) versus 626 walks (2.2 BB/9). His average year -- with numbers tamped down by the 1981 strike and the mercifully early end to his 1989 season -- was 12-9 in 182 innings with 200 hits allowed and 69 strikeouts. The BBWAA considered John's candidacy and his overall career mark of 288-231 every year for 15 years between 1995 and 2009. His percentage of the vote got no lower than 18.7% (1999) and no higher than 31.7% in 2009 -- the last season bump. Evaluative methods based on statistics are mixed for John as well. He did not lead the league often or even finish in the top ten with frequency in any of the major categories -- Black Ink score of 11 versus 40 for the average HOFer, Gray Ink score of 134 versus 185 for the Average HOFer. On the other hand, he scores a 112 on the HOF Monitor, which means that his longevity and his pitching for good teams helps him tick a lot of those boxes; indeed, 25 of his 112 points come from his 288 wins. The HOF Standards Test, which attempts to normalize the players in the Hall on a scale of 100 puts John at 44 and a likely HOFer at 50. And looking at similarity scores, the only two players on John's ten most similar pitchers who are not in the Hall are Jim Kaat -- #1 on the list -- and Tony Mullane (#8). But, to be fair, those beyond Kaat are not all that similar to John. Even using WAR/WAR7/JAWS is a mixed bag. John does pretty well with WAR due to the long career -- 62 for him, average pitcher in the Hall is 73.4. WAR7 and JAWS attempt to measure career peak more, and those are not kind to him -- 34.7 WAR7 (wins above replacement in his peak 7 seasons; HOF average is 50.2) and 48.4 JAWS (combines WAR and WAR7; average HOF pitcher is 61.8). What do you do with a problem like Tommy John and his HOF candidacy? Part of me is the sentimentalist. It says to reward the guy who stuck around so long, who overcame all the obstacles that life threw at him (I didn't even mention the issues with his son Travis in 1981, after all), who was a groundbreaker in sports medicine. The calculating, rationalist part of me looks at John's candidacy with a jaundiced eye. Would we even care about a pitcher with 288 wins over 26 seasons (which comes out to an average of just 13 wins a year) if not for the fact that John is a good-looking, tall, lanky lefty who pitched for two of baseball's most storied franchises and, oh, yeah, he has an elbow surgery named for him? Compare him to his most comparable fellow pitcher, Jim Kaat, for just a moment. Both pitched for a long time. Both finished with over 280 wins -- Kaat at 283, John at 288. Kaat also pitched for the Yankees for parts of a couple of seasons (1979 and 1980). John is slightly better in WAR for his career, Kaat is better on the Hall of Fame Monitor (130 vs. 112), and both are at 44 on the HOF Standards Monitor. I have gone back and forth on this, and in the end, I think he should go in. Joe Posnanski made a compelling case for the fact that, taken as a whole, John's career is groundbreaking -- for being Patient Zero -- and distinguished. Posnanski noted that Tommy John had 13 no-decisions in which he pitched eight or more innings and gave up one or fewer runs. Those 13 games going John's way would have given him 301 wins and we wouldn't be having this discussion. So, initially I was going to say no way, but I'm now convinced. While John would be a borderline Hall of Fame inductee, I think he should be in the Hall based on the overall body of his contributions to Major League Baseball. Yes, being desperate and having it work out positively matters sometimes.
Who Can It Be Now? Timothy Raines Sr. (not to be confused with his son) was born on September 16, 1959, in Sanford, Florida -- a smallish city of about 50,000 people an hour north of Orlando. Tim was one of 6 children who grew to adulthood and one of five boys born to Ned Jr. and Florence Raines. Tim's dad was a semipro baseball player in Sanford, and all five boys were excellent athletes. Raines's SABR biography mentions that one local baseball all-star game featured four Raines brothers around the infield -- Levi at first, Sam at second, Ned III at third base, and Tim at shortstop. Indeed, Tim was an excellent football player, starring at running back for Sanford Seminole High School. His SABR biography again mentions that he scored 18 TDs and averaged 10.5 yards per carry. Reviewing some game stories from the Daytona Beach Morning Journal confirms these crazy numbers to an extent. In one game write-up, the story went that Raines came back to football after planning initially to sit out his senior year:
Tim Raines had decided to sit out football to concentrate on a possible major league baseball career. But Sanford Seminole Coach Jerry Posey can thank his lucky stars that Raines changed his mind and joined the Seminole football team after the season opener. . . . Raines ruined the Bulldogs with his outside running and pass receiving. The 175 pound senior scored all four touchdowns for Sanford, three from the ground and one from the arm of quarterback John Litton. In all, Raines picked up 108 yards in 11 trips and added five receptions worth 66 yards in real estate against a reputed staunch [sic] DeLand defense.
As that football story hinted, Raines was known already in high school as being an excellent baseball player. Thus, after he graduated high school in 1977, the Expos drafted Raines in the fifth round of the June Regular draft. He stayed in Florida and played for the Expos Gulf Coast League affiliate in rookie league ball and showed off the blazing speed that would be his calling card in the early part of his career and the on-base skills that he kept throughout his career -- .280/.381/.342 with 29 steals and only 2 CS in 189 plate appearances. The Expos moved him to their Florida State League affiliate in 1978, and Raines responded well to the move. Despite being about 3-1/2 years younger than the average player in the league, Raines stole 57 bases (caught 21 times though) and hit .287/.400/.315 in 438 plate appearances. He also walked 64 times against just 44 strikeouts. Perhaps the only worrisome issue there was the lack of power he was showing. That was remedied at Double-A in 1979, where in 650 plate appearances and at the age of 19, Raines hit .290/.390/.399 with 25 2B, 10 3B, 5 HR, and 59 steals against just 12 CS -- and he walked 90 times versus just 51 strikeouts. Those numbers earned him a late season call-up to the majors in 1979, where he got a taste of a pennant race as a pinch runner. His 1980 season at Denver -- .354/.439/.501, 77 SB, 13 CS, 61 BB, 42 Ks -- showed that his previous seasons were not flukes (though certainly his numbers were inflated by playing in Denver). He got to play a few games in July and August for the Expos that season as an injury fill-in, and then went back to being a pinch runner in September. Now, what I had forgotten about Raines was that he came to the Major Leagues as a second baseman originally and, in fact, played at 2B and SS in the minor leagues. Short wasn't really an option for Raines, who played there only sparingly. Playing 2B for the Expos in 1980 primarily was 26-year-old Rodney Scott, who himself stole 63 bases in 1980. Behind Scott was 23-year-old Tony Bernazard, who himself had a decent career in front of him. So, 2B looked pretty jammed up too. The Expos realized, though, that they needed to make room for the 21-year-old phenom from Florida. They decided that Raines could be a leftfielder. They had picked up former Tiger Ron LeFlore after the 1979 season to play left. LeFlore still had incredible speed -- I mean, he stole 97 bases in 1980, after all, and with Scott set a record for most stolen bases by teammates in a season with 160. But LeFlore also was 32 years old and hit just .257/.337/.363 for Montreal in 1980. So, left field became Raines's position. Raines grabbed the opportunity and ran with it. Literally. In 88 games for the Expos, Raines stole 71 bases, which led the league and was 32 steals more than second place Omar Moreno's 39. The gap between the two of 32 steals itself would have finished in third place, 2 steals ahead of Rodney Scott's 30. Without the strike, Raines was on a pace to finish with 107 steals (the Expos played exactly 2/3 of their scheduled 162 games in 1981). I previously said that he would have stolen 121 bases. I think I had a methodology issue there because I think I forgot to extrapolate Raines's totals out against the Expos' remaining games; on Card 3, I think I simply extrapolated what would Raines's numbers would have been had he played 150 games. Anyway and as a result, Raines finished second -- correctly -- in the National League Rookie of the Year voting behind the phenomenon that was Fernando Valenzuela. 1981 was also the first of his seven consecutive selections for the All-Star game. Raines played in Montreal until after the 1990 season. It's possible that he would have left Montreal after the 1986 season, but in that year of owner collusion, he simply had to resign with the Expos on May 1. He was traded to the Chicago White Sox in December of 1990 with Jeff Carter in exchange for a minor leaguer, OF Ivan Calderon, and P Barry Jones. Raines spent five years on Chicago's South Side, continuing to get on base at a great clip and hitting with some pop. After the 1995 season, Raines was sent to the New York Yankees in exchange for a minor leaguer to be named later. Raines did get a World Series Championship with the Yankees after the 1996 season and again after the 1998 season, though Raines did not play in the World series in 1998. At the age of 39 in 1999, Raines played for the Oakland A's for 38 games, and it appeared that his career was over at that point. The reason for that was that Raines was diagnosed with lupus. Lupus is where a person's immune system begins attacking the person's own body due to a lack of antibodies in the system to prevent such attacks. Raines's lupus attacked his kidneys, causing him to retain water. He was treated during 1999, and he believed he was ready to play in 2000. The Yankees, under GM Bob Watson, gave him a chance to make their club. Yet, the Yankees released Raines after spring training in 2000. Later that year, it appearing that his career was over, the Expos inducted Raines into their team Hall of Fame. Raines told then-owner Jeffrey Loria that he still wanted a shot to play. As a result, Raines signed after the 2000 season as a free agent with the Montreal Expos, and spent the 2001 season with the Expos as an elder statesman, fifth outfielder and, perhaps, as a reminder to Expos fans that the team used to be good 20 years before. By this time, his son, Tim Jr., had played in High-A Frederick in the Carolina League and looked to be an adequate player -- definitely not as good as his old man, but decent. In 2001, Tim Jr. had worked his way up to Double-A and Triple-A baseball in the Baltimore Orioles system. As a result and at the very end of the 2001 season, the Expos and Orioles worked out a deal to send Tim Sr. to the woeful Orioles from the woeful Expos. That move allowed Tim Sr. and Tim Jr. to play in the same outfield against the Blue Jays on October 3 and in a three-game series against the Red Sox that weekend. Even that did not sate Raines's desire to play baseball, so he signed on for the 2002 season with the Florida Marlins so he could play in his home state. Apparently that season at the age of 42 was enough to convince him that he was done, as he hit .191/.351/.258 in 114 plate appearances. Mustache Check: You can't really tell on this photo. If we go by his 1982 Fleer card, though, the answer is yes:
Family Ties As I mentioned above, Tim Raines Sr. was lucky enough to play in the same outfield with his son, Tim Raines Jr., thanks to the Baltimore Orioles in 2001. That feat had been done just one time before, when the Griffeys -- Ken Sr. and Ken Jr. -- played together in Seattle. Another note above mentions how athletic Tim and his brothers were. If you read the SABR biography for Tim, you'll see that the Raines family believed that Tim's older brother Ned was actually the better player of the two growing up. Ned was drafted in 1978 in the January Draft by the San Francisco Giants out of junior college. Ned never made it past the California League, however, and his career in organized baseball was over after the 1980 season. Trivial Pursuit Raines played in the major leagues in four different decades -- the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. He is only one of four players to steal bases in all four of his decades in baseball. The other three are Ted Williams, Rickey Henderson, and Omar Vizquel. A Few Minutes with Tony L. Tim Raines was a young star in 1982 -- on par in many respects with guys like Bryce Harper today. By that, I mean that if the Expos GM in 1982 had called up your favorite team's GM and offered a trade for Raines, you would just hope that you had enough minor league parts to get him. Raines probably was better than Harper at that point, frankly, because Harper seems to be injured regularly and Harper appears to have a bit of an attitude problem. The only problem Raines had in 1982 was cocaine -- and he went to rehab for that and did not relapse. As far as I know, there is no rehab available for being something of a jerk. Back on card 3, I raised the question -- without answering it -- of whether Tim Raines belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Raines has received solid support in the 7 years he has been eligible -- with the percentages of the vote that he has received climbing at first through 2013, when he received 52.2% of the vote (with, of course, 75% needed for induction). This past year, he faded somewhat, getting 46.1% of the vote. Should he make it? In his favor, consider that four of his ten most similar players by similarity score are in the Hall -- Lou Brock, Max Carey, Fred Clarke, and Enos Slaughter. Another point in his favor is that those similarity scores are low -- ranging from 813 for Slaughter to 863 for Brock. A good sign of a unique, important player is that he is not nearly the same player as another in history. Also in his favor is the fact that the average WAR/WAR7/JAWS scores for the 19 Hall of Fame left fielders is 65.1/41.5/53.3, and Raines's scores are 69.1/42.2/55.6 -- making it appear that Raines is solidly above average when it comes to even being a Hall of Fame left fielder. On the other hand, Raines is slightly below to much below average when it comes to other measures for Hall of Famers. His Black Ink score (league leading) is 20, while the average HOFer is 27. Raines ranks 107th in that category. His Gray Ink scores -- top 10 league finishes -- is 114, and the average Hall of Famer is 144. Raines is 182nd in that category. His "Hall of Fame Monitor" score is 90, and a likely HOFer is 100; his Hall of Fame Standards number is 47, likely HOFer is 50. In other words, Raines may not have been a dominant enough player in his time. Bill James created the "Keltner List" in the 1990s in an effort to ask qualitative questions toward clearing up whether a player should be in the Hall or not. Last November, the "Cans of Cool" blog went through the Keltner List for Raines. The short Q&A version: 1. Was Raines ever the best player in baseball or suggested to be the best player in baseball? The answer is probably not, but he was around the top 5 to 10 players every year of the 1980s. 2. Was he the best player on his team? From '83 to '87, probably -- and in 1987 almost certainly. 3. Best player in baseball at his position? In his league at his position? Here's where Raines's misfortune of coming up at the same time as Rickey Henderson kicks in -- Raines was Henderson-lite. That's not a jab, either, because Henderson was an incredible, transcendent player who comes along once every 20 or 50 years -- if that frequently. Raines did everything Henderson did, but Henderson did all of them better. Raines might have been the best left fielder in the 1980s, though, before Barry Bonds emerged. 4. Impact on pennant races? In 1993 with the White Sox, definitely. In 1981, as a rookie, certainly. Other years, the Expos were good, but they could not get over the hump. He played significant time with the 1996 Yankees as well, but was nowhere near being a full-timer. 5. Good enough to play regularly past his prime? Sure, to an extent. Injuries cut his playing time more than a lack of ability did. 6. Best player in baseball history not in the Hall that is eligible? Certainly not. Barry, for all his failings, still is that guy. 7. Most players of comparable stats in the Hall? No, not really, though Brock is somewhat comparable and in the Hall. Raines shows better than Brock generally, though. 8. Do his numbers meet Hall standards? His stolen bases definitely do. 9. Was he better or worst than his numbers indicate? As the blog I mentioned says, he was a highly successful base stealer -- 84.6% success rate -- and he walked 450 times more than he struck out in an era of guys who struck out 150 times a season. 10. Is he the best player at his position not in the Hall? Nope, that's Bonds. Raines is second or maybe third if you count Pete Rose in the conversation and as a left fielder. 11. MVP consideration? He had three top 10 finishes, never won it, and he was not the guy who should have won it (using WAR) in any of those seasons. 12. All-Star seasons? He was a 7-time all-star and merited selection for probably 5 or 6 more. 13. If he was the best player on his team, would that team likely win the pennant? In his prime, probably. 14. Baseball history impact? Well, that Free agent collusion issue from 1987 revolved in large part around Raines and fellow Expos Andre Dawson. Maybe that's enough. 15. Did he uphold the Hall's standards of conduct? He had his issues with cocaine, certainly, but got clean shortly thereafter. That issue did not stop Hall voters from inducting Paul Molitor on his first go-round for the Hall (though Molitor's career numbers were a lot better). In all, it's a close issue -- much closer than Dave Parker or, for that matter, Jim Rice, in my opinion. Based solely on the numbers, Raines probably should be in the Hall of Fame and should have been in the Hall of Fame long before Jim Rice even sniffed admission. Compare the WAR/WAR7/JAWS numbers: Raines: 69.1/42.2/55.6 Rice: 47.4/36.2/41.8 Rice had to wait until his 15th year to be inducted, and he too had a backslide in voter support around 7 or 8 years into his candidacy. We will see whether the BBWAA will start a groundswell of support for Raines's candidacy in the years to come. It will be close, I think, but I believe Raines deserves admission -- and not solely based on the fact that he was a far, far better player than Jim Rice.
