Picked-up pieces while filling out my Hall of Fame ballot . . .
Yes on Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, Jim Rice, Bert Blyleven, and Rich Gossage. No on Mark McGwire, Andre Dawson, and Harold Baines.
Ripken and Gwynn are going to cruise to Cooperstown on the first ballot when the results are announced next month. Gossage has a shot. Rice will have to wait until next year. Blyleven, maybe never. More on them in a minute.
I have been dreading this McGwire question for a long time, hoping new information might surface before the Dec. 31 deadline. Alas, we have nothing new and our last image of Big Mac was his de facto steroid confession in March of 2005. Too bad. I loved the guy. He helped bring the game back with Sammy Sosa in 1998 and he hit a whopping 583 homers in his career.
But it's impossible to escape the conclusion that he was juicing -- even though he hit 49 homers in his rookie season when he was downright lanky. It'll always be impossible to quantify how much he was helped by artificial means, but McGwire's credentials are based solely on his power, and there's every indication that his power was artificially enhanced.
We can all argue about baseball's ambiguous policies and the number of sinners in Cooperstown, but this ballot does not have to stand up to a court of law. So he doesn't get this vote, and that's going to make it difficult for me down the road with Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and, yes, Barry Bonds.
Ripken should be unanimous, of course, but he won't get every vote. No one ever does. It's impossible to get 520 baseball writers to agree that today is Wednesday, and there will always be curmudgeons who hold out because Player X was not a first-ballot Hall of Famer. It's a bogus argument. A guy is in or he's out. First-ballot status is an artificial milestone. So Ripken will get a Tom Seaveresque 98 percent of the votes, and Gwynn won't be far behind.
Baines, another first-time caller, will come up short because he didn't reach 3,000 hits. If he feels bad, he should consider the lack of respect given to Dawson (56 more homers than Rice) and Albert Belle (picked on 7.7 percent of ballots last year despite Rice-like numbers and disposition). Blyleven, with his 287 wins for many bad teams and fifth all-time in strikeouts, always gets shortchanged by voters. Gossage got 64.6 percent of the votes last year (75 percent is needed for election), and could get some bounce in 2006.
Rice, meanwhile, had more votes than any non-electee last year (64.8 percent), but he'll probably fall back because of the strong new candidates.
