New York Nine

I have to be honest the whole Hall of Fame situation is so obvious and wrongheaded I almost didn’t write about it. As I was pretending to work and reading all the major sports websites practically every baseball writers, even the dumb ones, (Buster Olney cough cough) were rallying against the Hall of Fame voting system and how flawed it is to the point that it seems that everyone knows this fact. For me to rant and rave about how stupid the system almost seems superfluous because I’m really just preaching to the choir; after all when was the last time you talked to someone and they said “you know I really agreed with all the Hall of Fame inductions.” It’s gotten to the point that I’m starting to feel like it’s a manufactured talking point by baseball writers to create something to write about, and in truth I think I may be more right than wrong and that’s the problem. The Hall of Fame as originally intended was a place reserved only for the best players in the history of the game, not guys who everyone liked or was a great teammate or some subjective shit like that, just the best of the game and whose impact on their era was indelible. Of course this is the ideal of the Hall of Fame, and clearly that ideal is not being met because the people who decide are just that, people, and people are biased. People have their opinions and they have feelings and they want to believe their subjective experiences are important and unfortunately this gets in the way of the truth sometimes. Well it appears that these subjective tendencies have come to dominate Hall of Fame voting where the right people are not getting in and the wrong people are, and this year with what should have been lock first ballot Hall of Famers Barry Larkin and Roberto Alomar didn’t get in and the talented but highly flawed Andre Dawson did get in.

If you were to ask the writers and fans who saw Andre Dawson saw him play they would tell you he’s in the Hall right now because he was an all around talent capable of amazing things anywhere and everywhere. For his career hitting 438 home runs, stealing 314 bases, Dawson was a dual threat on the field and was a dominant player in his era. Along with the those gaudy numbers Dawson had eight All-Star appearances, eight gold gloves, as well as an MVP award in 1987 for the last place Cubs. To be sure, on the surface these numbers would make one think that Dawson is a slam-dunk Hall of Fame candidate, but the problem is those awards are similarly flawed and subjective. Indeed, gold gloves, All-Star appearances and MVP awards are not necessarily given to the best at that particular position because they are based on people’s subjective experiences and those subjective answers and those subjective ideas do not become objective by virtue of a lot of people agreeing on it. What are objective factors in deciding on what makes a good player are the numbers, and the numbers show Dawson to be a talented and very good player, but not a great player. If you haven’t heard, Dawson’s career .323OBP is the lowest on-base percentage of any Hall of Famer by TWENTY POINTS, twenty! Dawson’s OPS+ which adjusts to the park and the league he’s playing in puts Andre’s career number at 119, which is only 19 points higher than a replacement player. To put that in perspective, Bernie Williams, the Yankee centerfielder who by all accounts was a very good player, but not great had a career OPS+ of 123, do these numbers scream one of the all-time greats? Even at Dawson’s zenith in 1987 the numbers aren’t that great, where Dawson clearly benefited from the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field and hit only .247 on the road that season and was 12th in the league in OPS+. Sure Dawson hit 49 home runs that year, but to belabor the point the purpose of a hitter is to impact the game as much he can, and a hitter accomplishes that by getting on base and putting himself in a position to score runs. And while Dawson drove in some runs and drove in himself 49 times, how many runs did he take off the board by striking out over 100 time and only walking 32? Of course there will be many people who will say that walking isn’t the point of the game and that if you saw him play you could see how he impacted the game and I say those people are full of shit. If Dawson was really that great and he really did impact the game like people say he was when you saw him in person, then the numbers would show it. Just because Dawson was flashy and did some things well doesn’t mean he’s a great player, and by all accounts he was not.

Joe Posanski, one of the great voices in baseball today tackled this issue recently on si.com and attributed Dawson’s entry into the Hall because of the era’s lack of truly great players. Playing in an era in the 1970s and 80s when statically there wasn’t a Cobb or Feller or a Ruth, Dawson may not have been on their level in his impact on the game, but for his time he was one of the great players, and I find this reason very unsatisfactory. Posanski goes on how writers who grew up watching these guys from this era need to validate that their childhood heroes were as good as they remember and it is exactly this type of reasoning that is ruining the sanctity of the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is for the best of the game of all time, and just because you saw a guy do some great things in a seminal time in your life does not simply erase the objective facts, and those facts point to Andre Dawson not being as good as those writers would want you to think. This fact may not sit well with some old crusty writers, but it’s not them who I’m worried about, I’m worried about the game and the importance of Hall to the game for all generations and putting inferior players in there along the all time greats is an insult. Maybe I’m taking the importance of the Hall of Fame too much to heart, but something needs to be done to correct this sort of backwards thinking immediately or we will continue to forget what’s really important and what truly makes greatness so great.