CBSSports.com Senior Writer
Jan. 4, 2008
Bert Blyleven: 287 wins, 3,701 strikeouts, 60 shutouts, 3.31 ERA.
I spent a good part of the past couple of weeks looking at my Hall of Fame ballot ... and seeing Roger Clemens.
Now, the Rocket Man is nowhere close to being eligible for Cooperstown, and not just because of the Mitchell Report. But Bert Blyleven is.
In fact, Blyleven is in his 11th year on the ballot. After this, he has only four more years' worth of eligibility. Some folks think the fact Blyleven remains on the outside looking in is just about right. Others, me included, point to a couple of key Dutchman statistics, check the box next to his name, mail our ballots back in and hope this is the year the rest of the voters get it right, too.
One of those statistics I always point to with Blyleven is career strikeouts.
And even though my eye doctor agrees I'm nowhere close to needing bifocals, this is where I kept seeing a name that wasn't even on the ballot this winter.
Clemens.
See, until recently, Blyleven, behind one of the best curveballs in history, ranked third on baseball's all-time strikeouts list. Third! Ahead of such luminaries (and Hall of Famers) as Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson and Cy Young.
He has dropped to fifth all-time now -- still highly impressive, obviously -- because Clemens and Randy Johnson have passed him.
And now, this winter, former Sen. George Mitchell's investigation led to a syringe, steroids, Clemens' ass and the years 1998, 2000 and 2001.
Now, we are presented with substantial circumstantial evidence that Clemens' sudden late-career turnaround in 1998 -- he went 14-0 with a 2.29 ERA in Toronto following a 6-6 start that season after former trainer Brian McNamee allegedly injected him with steroids -- wasn't exactly ethical and legal.
If this damning evidence is true, mark Blyleven as yet another of history's boys whose numbers have been illicitly overshadowed.
The Hall of Fame ballots were due by Dec. 31, and the prediction here is that former closer Goose Gossage finally will have his day -- deservedly -- when the results are announced Tuesday. Blyleven, whose 47.7 percent of the votes last winter fell substantially short of the 75 percent needed for induction, probably, sadly, will fall short again.
So the age-old Cooperstown debates continue, only with a new and, unfortunately, all-too-modern twist. Here are the five names I checked off on my ballot this year, along with some of the thinking behind it.
As for Clemens, who must wait five years after his retirement before appearing on the ballot (standard procedure for everyone), I'm not sure whether I'll look at 60 Minutes on Sunday evening and see Blyleven. But I'm pretty sure I'll be sickened by what I do see. ...
Bert Blyleven: In addition to him ranking fifth all-time on the strikeouts list -- fourth if you prefer to attach an asterisk to Clemens now -- Blyleven ranks ninth all-time for shutouts. Of the top 20 players on that list, Blyleven is the only one not enshrined in Cooperstown. Furthermore, Blyleven finished with 287 career wins. With 13 more, he would have been an automatic Hall of Famer. He spent almost his entire career pitching for poor Minnesota and Cleveland teams. Had even three or four of those Twins and Indians teams been mediocre instead of wretched, he easily would have 300 wins. And he would have been enshrined a long time ago.
Goose Gossage: With 71.2 percent of the vote last winter, Gossage has finally picked up the momentum that surely should carry him across the Hall threshold this winter. And it's about time, too. Moving from starter to closer under Chuck Tanner in Chicago in the 1970s, the snorting and snarling Goose paved the way for guys like Dennis Eckersley (Hall of Fame, Class of 2004).
Based on Gossage's long wait -- he's in his ninth year on the ballot -- I don't think people come close to appreciating how dominant he was. The knock is that he never collected more than 33 saves in a season. But he pitched two and three innings at a time -- dominant innings. He wasn't sheltered like today's one-inning specialists. His 27 saves for the 1978 Yankees came over 134 innings. He also earned 21 decisions that year, finishing with a 10-11 record. In 1975, he led the AL with 26 saves -- over a whopping 141 innings pitched.
This season, Cleveland's Joe Borowski led the AL with 45 saves -- while pitching 66 1/3 innings, less than half the workload of Gossage in '75. The game has changed, yes. But to diminish the smaller save numbers of yesterday's closers in light of today's 40- and 50-save guys is both wrong and disingenuous. Especially a guy like Gossage, whom AL batters of the 1970s (and NL hitters when he closed for Pittsburgh in 1977 and finished with the Padres in the 1980s) despised facing.
Jim Rice: Some argue that he wasn't great long enough. I argue that while his stardust wasn't sprinkled over 15 years, the intensity of his greatness over most of a 10-year period makes up for it. I still marvel over his 1978 AL MVP season, when he collected a staggering 406 total bases. His was the first 400-plus total bases season since Hank Aaron's 400 in 1959, and it hasn't been done in the AL since.
In fact, the only players who have done it since Rice were attached to either Coors Field (Larry Walker, 409 total bases for Colorado in 1997 and Todd Helton, 405 in 2000) or the Steroid Era (Sammy Sosa collected 416 total bases in 1998 and 425 in 2001).
Aside from that '78 MVP season, Rice finished among the top five in the AL MVP voting on five other occasions.
Jack Morris: Part of the qualifications for Cooperstown are whether a player was dominant in his era. Morris had more wins in the 1980s than any other pitcher and his 14 opening day starts are tied with Steve Carlton, Randy Johnson, Walter Johnson and Cy Young for the second-most ever behind Tom Seaver's 16. And yet ... he obtained a paltry 37.1 percent of the vote last winter.
Those who don't vote for Morris point out that his 3.90 ERA would be the worst such mark of any Hall of Famer. But there was no DH when so many others were pitching. In 1972, the year before the DH was instituted, the median AL ERA was 3.06. It was 4.50 in 2007. Morris should be in.
Alan Trammell: Cal Ripken is in. Robin Yount is in. Trammell was the third of the shortstops of the 1980s who changed the way people viewed the position. Suddenly, teams realized, they could get offensive production.
Only six of the 21 Hall of Fame shortstops collected more than 1,000 RBI and more than 1,000 runs scored -- something you'll find on the back of Trammell's baseball card. And of those, the only three with more lifetime homers than Trammell are Ernie Banks, Yount and Ripken.
Sure, there's room for debate with Trammell -- he isn't a slam-dunk candidate. But he's far closer to Cooperstown than the embarrassingly low total of 13.4 percent of the vote he obtained last year.
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