There you go…

Between 1985, when he was signed by the Pirates out of Arizona State, to 2007, Barry Bonds was, without question, baseball’s dominant position player and one of baseball’s all-time greats in so many categories that it boggles the mind. The irony is that the only statistics that were inflated by ‘roids were those having to do with the long ball and games missed (faster injury recovery time with ‘roids ). As someone who played baseball for many years and who faced pitchers who had successful careers in the bigs, I fully appreciated the comment that ‘roids never helped even one batter make the decision in a fifth of a second that the pitch coming in is a slider and not a fast ball.

What impressed me most about Bonds was his unequaled command of the strike zone. He never beat himself by fishing out of the strike zone. His knowledge of the strike zone was so keen that he forced intimidated pitchers to make great pitches on the corners, one of many reasons he was the walk king of baseball. His intentional walk total, tops in history by far, spoke volumes about how menacing he was as a batter. During my time, I’ve seen Williams, Mays, Mantle, Musial, Aaron, both Robinsons, Griffey, Rodriguez, Sosa, McGujire, Pujols, Ramirez, Schmidt, Brett, Yastrzemski, McCovey, Jackson, Henderson, Bagwell, Walker, Palmeiro, Kaline, Clemente, Gwynn, Matthews, Piazza, Snider, Molitor, Belle, Ripken, Dawson, Banks, Killebrew, Perez, McGriff, Parker, Allen, Kent, Raines, Minoso, Boggs, Clark, Santo, Lynn, Puckett, Bench, Gonzalez, and Bonds hit baseballs. In my opinion, Bonds was a better hitter than all of them. Although he was a self-congratulatory jerk with the media and someone who alienated other teammates with his special barcolounger in the clubhouse, he also helped many less talented players become better hitters. Bonds was a consummate student of the game and would make a great hitting coach if he wanted to do that.

In summary, comparing Jim Rice with Barry Bonds is like comparing Deion Branch to Jerry Rice–no real comparison at all.

At least these buffoons didn’t elect Jack Morris, but they came pretty close.

Total ignorance on display by the BBWAA.

Whitey Herzog
Satchel Paige
Dick Williams
Cristóbal Torriente
Sparky Anderson
Tommy Lasorda…

I mean, their are some great names in there. Clearly Aaron Sele deserves to be enshrined.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/pics/israel_sanchez_autograph.jpg

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5314753

1. Murray Chass – Chass, a mere blogger, will give up his undeserved HOF vote, but only after attempting to vote in Jack Morris. Whether or not Morris deserves it is beside the point. He’s sticking to all other HOF eligible players as a consequence. Total Chasshole move, bro.

2. BBWAA – The Baseball Writers Association of America is a conglomerate of douchenozzles, many of which no longer write about baseball, but yet still have more say on the subject than the biggest baseball fans out there. A total clusterdouche. As opposed to entering each voter as a DN individually, which would be unfair to the non-DNs within the group, the entire organization will be granted passage into douchenozzledom as a whole.

I don’t need any sabermetrics, I saw him pitch in the 80′s, even that moustache could be intimidating, at times…LOL

But regardless, this is still about ego, so give me a thumbs up anyway.

The HOF itself was >$2M in the hole last year itself, and this result from the BBWAA does not help. The Hall has a much more important mission than hanging luminaries’ bronze plaques on a wall–it preserves historic artifacts of a game we love, maintains archives that enable research, and restores artifacts and documents. The Hall not being able to induct any living legends means a lot fewer visitors this summer, lost income, and ultimately less ability to preserve baseball history. That is awful.

No matter what the Hall’s representatives say in public,, they need to change things.