The Chicago Tribune
January 6, 2010 2:00 PM
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/
Andre Dawson was an eight-time All-Star and eight-time Gold Glover. (Tribune file photo)
Andre Dawson was one happy former Cub on Wednesday.
A jump of 59 votes from 2009 got Dawson into baseball's Hall of Fame in his ninth year on the ballot. Dawson, the only player elected this year, was thrilled.
"The wait isn't a big factor in the scheme of things,'' Dawson said. "You get frustrated when people say, 'When are you going to get in,' and you don't have an answer for that. As I sit here now, I think it was well worth the wait. ... One thing my mama always said is it's going to happen one day, just be ready when it happens.''
Dawson, who finished 44 votes short a year ago when Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice were elected, was named on 420 of 539 ballots in this year's Baseball Writers Association of America election -- good for 77.9 percent of the vote.
Dawson played with the Cubs in 1987-92, winning NL MVP honors in '87. He was an eight-time All-Star and won eight Gold Gloves. But because he never played on a World Series champion, little in baseball made Dawson happier than his election to the Hall.
Dawson was almost joined by two others. Pitcher Bert Blyleven received 400 votes, only five less than needed, and first-ballot candidate and former White Sox second baseman Roberto Alomar was named on 397 ballots, eight short. That suggests that both will be elected in the future, most likely in 2011.
"This is a beautiful day for Andre Dawson,'' Blyleven told the MLB Network. "I'm surprised Roberto Alomar didn't make it. Hopefully my time is coming."
Alomar was followed by pitcher Jack Morris with 282 (52.3 percent). Cincinnati shortstop Barry Larkin was on 278 ballots (51.6 percent), followed by reliever Lee Smith at 255 (47.3 percent) and Edgar Martinez at 195 (36.2 percent).
"I feel disappointed, but next year hopefully I make it in," Alomar said from his home in New York. "At least I was close."
Mark McGwire received 128 votes (23.7 percent), 10 more than last year and matching the total from his first two times on the ballot.
Dawson came to Chicago in grand fashion, giving the Cubs the chance to sign him for a blank check after he languished on a free-agent market that was later judged by an arbitrator to have been manipulated by owners. He was among the players receiving damages from those collusion findings.
Dawson becomes the 46th Cub elected to the Hall of Fame. This will mark the fifth induction in the last seven years with a Cubs connection, following the election of Dennis Eckersley in 2004, Ryne Sandberg in '05, Bruce Sutter in '06 and Goose Gossage in '08.
Dawson will be inducted July 25 at Cooperstown along with manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey, elected last month by the Veterans Committee.
Former White Sox icon Harold Baines can take some stock in remaining on the Hall of Fame ballot for the fifth year. He received 33 votes, which was 6.1 percent of the ballot. Five percent is necessary to stay on the ballot.
Robin Ventura (7 votes), Ellis Burks (2 votes) and Eric Karros (2 votes) were on the ballot for the first time, and didn't receive enough support to return to the ballot in 2011
Andre Dawson receives just due with Hall of Fame election
Outfield great won MVP award with Chicago Cubs in 1987
Phil Rogers
The Chicago Tribune
January 7, 2010
Andre Dawson steals third (part of a double steal) ahead of the throw to Expos third baseman Tim Wallach at Wrigley Field. (Ed Wagner, Jr., Chicago Tribune)
Never one to sweat the details, Andre Dawson is happily on his way to Cooperstown.
A man who generated respect along with run production throughout his 21-year career, six of his most satisfying seasons coming when he was based at Wrigley Field, Dawson will take his place in the Hall of Fame alongside Ryne Sandberg, who like "The Hawk" knew Wrigley before there were lights.
There was never a real question of Dawson's Hall of Fame worthiness -- anyone who saw him dominate the National League with the Cubs and Montreal Expos knew he had earned his spot among baseball's greats. The question was how long he would have to wait, and that finally was answered Wednesday.
Dawson, whose signing with the Cubs in 1987 was one of the most amazing stories in team history, was more gracious than he needed to be on the subject of hard-to-convince voters.
"The wait isn't a big factor in the scheme of things," said Dawson, 55, who was a huge fan favorite on the North Side. "You get frustrated when people say, 'When are you going to get in?' and you don't have an answer for that. As I sit here now, I think it was well worth the wait."
One of the best outfielders of his generation, and one of nine players to win a National League Most Valuable Player Award playing for the Cubs, Dawson had to wait through eight annual disappointments before getting the good news Wednesday from the Baseball Writers Association of America. An increase of 59 votes to 420 of the 539 cast got him beyond the 75-percent threshold that is the Hall of Fame's standard.
Though no other players were elected -- Bert Blyleven fell five votes short of the 405 needed and Roberto Alomar eight -- Dawson won't go into the Hall on July 25 alone -- the Veterans Committee last month selected manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey.
Dawson, who retired after the 1996 season, didn't seem to mind the nine-ballot judgment once he knew it was over. In fact, during a conference call with voters, it was Dawson who apologized. He told writers from Chicago and Montreal he was sorry for having kept them waiting so long after games for his comments.
When Dawson kept reporters waiting, he wasn't being rude. He was consistently one of the last players out of the training room, seemingly always nursing knees that were damaged so badly on the highway-firm artificial turf of Montreal's Olympic Stadium that he first pondered retirement in 1980, when he was only 26.
"I almost quit the game after four years because I had a fractured knee," said Dawson, who would play long enough to pile up 438 home runs, 1,591 runs batted in and 314 stolen bases. "My wife sat me down, said, 'This is not something you need to do. You will regret it in a year or two. Whatever you need to do to correct it, you need to do.' ... I always was lucky to have people around me who told me what I needed to hear."
A big-leaguer at 22, Dawson would slug his way to the MVP award he won on a last-place Cubs team in 1987. But he was so much more than a slugger at the start of his career.
While helping the Expos' franchise establish itself, he was a true five-tool player. He could win games by stealing bases or throwing out runners with his strong right arm. How many people remember that he won half of his eight Gold Glove awards playing center field? He moved to right field only when a kid named Tim Raines arrived from the Expos' rich pipeline of amateur talent.
Dawson's signing with the Cubs on the eve of the 1987 season is one of the most amazing stories in franchise history. He had languished on the free-agent market so long that offseason that he authorized his agent, Dick Moss, to let Cubs general manager Dallas Green fill in the salary on a "blank-check" contract.
"For me, it wasn't about a monetary issue," Dawson said. "It was about respect."
Because no teams had stepped up to sign Dawson or any of the other top free agents that year, Moss let the Cubs know that Dawson would play for whatever figure they offered. He has a solid recollection of his negotiations with Green.
"He called me, said he had gone through (the contract) with his attorneys and that there didn't seem to be any questions about it (being valid), but that the best they could do was offer you $500,000. I said that's perfectly fine, when can I report? He paused for a moment -- I can only speculate what he was doing then -- and said I'll get back to you. He called me back an hour later and said welcome aboard."
An arbitrator later ruled that free-agent market to have been manipulated by owners, and Dawson was among the players receiving damages from those collusion findings. He went on to lead the NL with 49 homers and 137 runs batted in for the Cubs, who finished in last place with a 76-85 record.
You couldn't blame Dawson for the ending of that story.
But he gets all the credit for the latest one, which finally is receiving the final chapter it deserves.
progers@tribune.com
Dawson loomed large in era that produced few legendary players
By Joe Posnanski>INSIDE BASEBALL
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/
January 7, 2010
Andre Dawson is one of three players, along with Willie Mays and Barry Bonds, with more than 400 home runs and 300 stolen bases.
This will be about Andre Dawson, the one player chosen this year by the Baseball Writers Association for the Hall of Fame, but there has to be a bit of set up first. I have this feeling that Dawson's induction this year -- and Jim Rice's induction last year and Jack Morris' climb up the charts -- has something to do with childhood and heroes.
There are much deeper emotions tied to the Baseball Hall of Fame, I think, then for the other Halls. Questions like why Otis Taylor is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- or Jerry Kramer or Ray Guy or Jim Tyrer or Drew Pearson or Bob Kuechenberg or L.C. Greenwood or Chuck Howley or Randy Gradishar -- don't seem to excite the masses. I suspect most people think that at least some of those players ARE in the Hall of Fame.
Same is true in basketball. If I gave you a list of 10 people -- Jim Boeheim, Artis Gilmore, Gail Goodrich, Bill Packer, Jack Sikma, Eddie Sutton, Nate Thurmond, Willis Reed, Dick Vitale, Buck Williams -- you would probably have a hard time picking the five who are in and the five who are out.*
*In case you care (and didn't know off the top of your head):
In: Boeheim, Goodrich, Thurmond, Reed, Vitale.
Out: Gilmore, Packer, Sikma, Sutton, Williams.
But baseball is different. There have been groups trying to get Shoeless Joe Jackson into the Hall of Fame for about a half century, and you can expect there will be people trying to get Pete Rose into the Hall (and keep him out) forever. There have been millions of words caught in the World Wide Web about why Bert Blyleven absolutely does and does not belong in the Hall of Fame, and not only Blyleven but also Jack Morris, Tim Raines, Ron Santo, Mark McGwire, Dick Allen, Charlie Keller, Marvin Miller, Dr. Frank Jobe, Bill James and the San Diego Chicken.
Emotion. But why? I suppose that part of it is that baseball probably is more connected to its history than other sports. That's obvious. I suppose that part of it is that baseball is such a number driven sport and so it's more tempting to compare players through the decades. I'm not sure how anyone other than the great Dr. Z could compare Jerry Kramer to Will Shields. I'm not sure how you can legitimately compare Scottie Pippen to Bob Pettit.
But I can tell very easily -- and from a thousand different angles -- compare the numbers of Johan Santana and Lefty Grove. I can adjust those numbers to period. I can factor in their ballparks. Baseball just FEELS comparable in ways that other sports do not.
I think that leads into the main point ... something about timelessness and childhood and heroes. Baseball (alone, I think, among big-time American sports) can give a child the illusion that he/she is watching the sport at it's very best -- better than it was ever played before, better than it will ever be played again. I don't think that children of the 1950s or 1960s or 1970s can honestly say that the quality of football was BETTER then than it is now. I mean the players were so much smaller and slower than now. Same goes with basketball. The golfers of the 1960s may have been better than he golfers now, but they were using much different equipment and playing much shorter courses. The tennis players of the 1970s may have been more fun, but with their wood rackets and Pong-like rallies, they were playing a very different game from today.*
*I remember once, during a recent U.S. Open, they showed an old match between (I believe) Tracy Austin and Chris Evert. I think it was Austin in the studio, and she was so taken aback by how slowly the ball floated back and forth she actually shouted "Hit the ball!"
But baseball endures. Many people will tell you that Babe Ruth was the best player in baseball history -- well, he retired in 1935, the year "electronic television" was unveiled. Many people will tell you that the best pure hitter in baseball history was Ted Williams -- and he fought in World War II and in Korea.* Maybe people will tell you the best all-around player was Willie Mays, and he played long enough ago that he actually started his professional career in the Negro Leagues. Then again, it might be Oscar Charleston who played his WHOLE career in the Negro Leagues.
*Some say the best pure hitter was Ty Cobb, who started his career when Teddy Roosevelt was present.
Yes, baseball bows to its history -- and it allows us to stay forever young. It allows times to stand still. Here, for example, were the Top 25 players of the 20th Century according to the Society of Baseball Research (this was done in 1999) -- I try to break them up by the time period when they were stars:
1900-1914 (5): Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young.
1915-1929 (4): Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Tris Speaker, Grover Cleveland Alexander.
1930-1944 (4): Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Bob Feller.
1945-1954 (3): Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Warren Spahn (Yogi Berra at 26).
1955-1964 (3): Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle (Ernie Banks at 27).
1965-1974 (5): Bob Gibson, Johnny Bench, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, Frank Robinson.
1975-1999 (1): Mike Schmidt.
That's it. One guy in the last 25 years. Now, of course, it's tough to judge the time you are living in -- and I'm sure that if we extended things to 2009, the group would put Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Barry Bonds in the Top 25, maybe Pedro Martinez, maybe Rickey Henderson and Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs up or near the top. But it is instructive that when the century ended, the general feeling was that 24 of the 25 best players played long ago. There were not, apparently, too many living legends.
The lull of great players seems at its apex from about 1975 to 1987 or so -- which just so happens to be my childhood. The truth is, there just weren't many legendary players during my childhood -- no Ruth, no Mays, no Feller, no Gibson, no Williams. Mike Schmidt was great -- he is pretty widely viewed as the best third baseman ever -- and George Brett was an all-timer though he got hurt a lot and Joe Morgan was for a time the best player in the game though many of his skills were so subtle that people missed them. Eddie Murray was so steady, that's what people called him. Steve Carlton and Jim Palmer were terrific pitchers.
But mostly it was a time for disappointment. Mark Fidrych got hurt. Dave Parker got involved with drugs. Dale Murphy inexplicably faded. So did George Foster. Don Mattingly's back went out. Fred Lynn was never quite the same after he left Fenway Park. Ron Guidry's body could not hold up. J.R. Richard had a stroke. On and on and on -- Pedro Guerrero, Darryl Strawberry, Jeff Burroughs, Dwight Gooden, Vida Blue, Eric Davis. All these guys and more looked like potential legends. And, for one reason or another, it didn't quite work out.
Well, wait a minute: We can't just accept that, can we? I mean: This is what I mean about baseball and childhood. We cannot just accept that, for various reasons, our time was devoid of legends. Our parents had Willie, Mickey and the Hank, their parents had Williams and DiMaggio and Musial, their parents had Gehrig and Ruth and Hornsby. Our kids had Bonds and Maddux and Unit and Pedro and Pujols. Where were our legends?
And I think that's why the last few Hall of Fame ballots have been about how we want to remember our time. Bruce Sutter was elected in 2006 -- you probably know he pitched the fewest innings of any pitcher in the Hall of Fame including Babe Ruth. His career is virtually indistinguishable from Dan Quisenberry, who pitched at the same time and got no Hall of Fame support. But we REMEMBERED Sutter as fearsome, overwhelming, a legend of his time.
Last year, Jim Rice was elected. There are at least a dozen outfielders with similar or better careers who never came close to the Hall of Fame -- including his teammate Dwight Evans. And Rice put up his numbers in large part because he played half his games at Fenway Park when it was a savage hitters park. He hit 40 points higher and slugged almost 100 points higher at home. But no matter: We REMEMBERED him as fearsome, overwhelming, a legend of his time.
Every year, Jack Morris gets more and more support -- he moved past the magical 50 percent mark this year. Never mind that his 3.90 ERA would be the highest in the Hall of Fame. We REMEMBER him as fearsome, overwhelming, a legend of his time.
And finally: Andre Dawson. There is absolutely no question that Dawson at his best was a sight to behold. He hit home runs. He stole bases. He charged after fly balls with fury. He threw like Clemente. Before his knees went bad -- I'd say from about 1979 to 1983 -- he was the closest thing we had to Clemente. He was playing in Montreal at the time, and we as a nation did not get to see him play much -- but we saw enough. Dawson in those younger days was awesome.
And then, the knees did go bad -- probably from those years playing on that miserable Montreal turf. And he stopped being quite so awesome. Yes, in 1987 he gave the Chicago Cubs a blank contract and told them to fill in the numbers, and then he played as if possessed and mashed 49 home runs and drove in 137 runs. The baseball writers were so awed they gave Dawson the MVP even though the Cubs were in last place. The managers gave Dawson the Gold Glove even though he couldn't move anymore. That was nice.
But, no, Dawson probably wasn't a great player by then. The numbers were part illusion -- the ball was juiced that year and so was Wrigley Field. He was 12th in the league in OPS+. On the road, he hit .246. Well, he was just not the player he had been. Dawson hit for lower batting averages and hardly ever walked in those days and so his on-base percentages were annually below even the league average. But it's like his defenders would shout later: "Who cares about on-base percentage?" Or: "If the Hawk wanted to walk, he could have walked, that wasn't his job." Or: "You just had to see him play."
Dawson never stopped playing hard, and he always had that aura. He was the Hawk. We needed him. Our TIME needed him.
And so now he's in the Hall of Fame, and even though I did not vote for him I'm very happy for him. I'm happy for my childhood. Dawson at his best was a truly great player. And that's the way we want to remember him ... and our childhood.
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