Andre Dawson elected to Hall of Fame

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100106/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_hall_of_fame

Deserving? More deserving than Roberto Alomar? Any thoughts?

If Jim Rice is in then Dawson should be in. Alomar, I think, will have to wait because of the spitting incident. Same thing happened to Marichal when he became eligible. I also think Blyleven should be in the Hall.

I agree that Rice (Iʻm a Red Sox fan) and Dawson are about equal.

Itʻs harder to compare Dawson with Blyleven, because a pitcher doesnʻt play every day, and yet has terrific responsibilities, but, if you could compare them (very hypothetically) Blyleven was a greater player than Dawson, and should be in the Hall.

Blyleven had some interesting numbers early in his career. From 71-77 his ERAs were 2.81, 2.73, 2.52, 2.66, 3.00, 2.87, and 2.72 but his record was 112-104. A little run support then and Bert might have 300-320 wins instead of 287 and he would have probably bee first ballot.

Hmm: 287 wins and he once had a 2.87 ERA! And they say thereʻs nothing in numerology!

By todayʻs standards, getting below 3.00 in 6 out of 7 years is tremendous, and exactly 3,00 the other year.

No Twin pennant winners in the years 71-77, if I remember rightly. I assume that was in spite of
Blyleven, not because of him.

They generally finished third or fourth out of six teams. The Twins had Killebrew at the end of his career and Carew was still young, but they didn't score much. Plus the old A.L. West had Oakland and an good K.C. team in those years.

Back to Dawson...however one interprets the stats, the guy had a great look, even after his knees were screwed and he lost his baserunning speed. (I followed him more in his Chicago years.) The Hall of Fame is, in part, a beauty contest, and Dawson had that lanky appearance of earlier era, before steroids gave us the Invasion of the Fat Boys.

And he could still hit with power.

Dawson also had one of the best outfield arms of his era.

Does anyone think that Juan Marichal should've perhaps been kept out of the Hall of Fame? I mean, I can't really imagine a more horrific thing to do on a baseball field.

I've read that Marichal and Roseboro eventually buried the hatchet so to speak and became friendly. So I guess if Roseboro can forgive him I can't argue against his election to the Hall. Plus there's all the old stories about Cobb and other old timers fighting umps or going into the stands like a dead ball era Ron Artest.

My investment in a complete series in Andre Dawson baseball cards finally paid off. He was my favorite player that I never got to see. Thankfully he played those few years with the Cubs and I watched him on WGN, but the Expos were on the NBC game of the week maybe once a year. This was way before cable, of course.

In Ken Burns' "Baseball", Daniel Okrent says he feels that Ty Cobb is (I may be paraphrasing) "a blight on the Game." I thought that was interesting.