Category: Sports

An amusing flowchart to help you decide.

Pitchers and catchers reported to spring training.

Bob [Costas] did not go into details, but many people do — ALL THE TIME. I cannot tell you how many times in my life, much less in the last month, I have received emails that basically say something like: “Willie Mays — now THAT is a Hall of Famer. That is who I have in mind when I think of the Hall of Fame not (Player X) who you wrote about.”

So, that’s my mission here — to create The Willie Mays Hall of Fame.

A great post on the Baseball Hall of Fame from, who else, Joe Posnanski.

Joe Posnanski continues his discussion of the Baseball Hall of Fame. His latest post includes this:

Ed is exactly right, when he says the Hall of Fame is an honor not a right. But you know what this part of the Baseball Hall of Fame really is? It’s a room in the baseball museum in Cooperstown where they put the plaques of the greatest players in baseball history. It’s a tourist attraction. It’s a place where fans go and remember their childhood, reminisce about the game, consider their connections. It’s so easy to get high and mighty about this thing, so easy to lose the whole point. I’m not sure how the Hall of Fame became about innocent and guilty in the first place. It’s a room overflowing with cheaters and liars and gamblers and fools. It’s a room overflowing with heroes and devoted fathers and good neighbors and nice men. But, really, it’s a room with the greatest baseball players ever along with some very good players along with some good players who had powerful lobbyists.

Joe Posnanski continues his week-long series on the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Worth reading if only for his defense of Mark McGwire.

Albuquerque Isotope and NewMexiKen favorite Chin-lung Hu was traded from the Dodgers to the Mets yesterday. No more “Hu’s on first.”

Joe Posnanski is writing about the Baseball Hall of Fame this week — ballots are due Friday.

His first installment is here.

Today’s is here.

I thought this excerpt from today’s essay was thought-provoking. We forget I think how good you have to be to make “the show.”

For instance, last year Todd Zeile was on the Hall of Fame ballot. Todd Zeile? He did not receive a vote, to no one’s surprise.

But you know what? Todd Zeile was a good player. He got 2,000 hits in the Major Leagues. He drove in 90-plus runs five times. He played five positions, and even pitched a couple of innings.

He was not a Hall of Famer, not close to a Hall of Famer, but that’s precisely the point, isn’t it? To play 10 years of Major League Baseball — a qualification just to get on the ballot — means you must be one of the very best baseball players on earth .

You are better and more determined than all those players whose baseball lives stopped in little league, all those good enough to make their high school teams but no more, all those who went on to play college at some small school, all those good enough to go to a Division I school but were not drafted, all those promising and resolved young players drafted or signed outside of North America who stalled in the low end of the minor leagues, all those who topped out low Class A, in high Class A, in Class AA, in Class AAA, all those who made it through it all to get to a cup of coffee in the big leagues, all those who worked their way up to a small and temporary role in the big leagues, all those who endured and became regulars in the big leagues for two or three or four years before being retired.

To achieve so much … to reach the very height of your profession … it is an extraordinary thing to be a baseball player with 10 years of big league experience, an even more extraordinary thing to achieve enough to get on the Hall of Fame ballot. And then, you get there and it is STILL still miles and miles and miles to go before you get to the Hall of Famers. It is still the gap between Todd Zeile and Cooperstown.

Has Jeter been worth it? Absolutely. But it seems a bit bold to say that the Yankees have not already pay Jeter plenty for being an icon and a role model and a true Yankee and everything else. According to Baseball Reference’s WAR, Derek Jeter was the 10th most valuable player over the last 10 years:

1. Albert Pujols, 83.8 WAR
2. Alex Rodriguez, 64.8
3. Barry Bonds, 55.7 (despite only playing about six seasons)
4. Ichiro Suzuki, 55.2
5. Carlos Beltran, 51.1
6. Chipper Jones, 47.5
7. Scott Rolen, 46.6
8. Todd Helton, 44.7
9. Lance Berkman, 43.8
10. Derek Jeter, 43.1

That’s really good. That might even be $189 million good. But I don’t think I’d be sticking an “amount still due” bill under the Steinbrenners’ door. I’d say Jeter has been paid quite well for his efforts, tangible and intangible.

From a post by Joe Posnanski, who argues the Yankees’ offer of $45 million for three years is legit and no one else will offer Jeter more.