The facts and whispers on PEDs

Hall of Fame ballot: The facts and whispers on PEDs
Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2012/11/28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-roger-clemens-barry-bonds/1731833/

Baseball's Hall of Fame released its 2013 ballot Wednesday
Several players directly or indirectly tied to steroid use appear for the first time
Players have 15 years to earn election to the Hall

November 28. 2012 - It will be known, immediately and for the foreseeable future, as the Baseball Hall of Fame's Doping Class.

Wednesday, the Hall released its 2013 ballot that will be sent to 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, who must decide how best to handle a long list of players tied directly, indirectly or circumstantially to performance-enhancing drugs.

Indeed, the debate will not die once balloting results are released Jan. 9.

And the support each player receives likely won't remain static, either. A player must be named on 75% of ballots to earn induction to the Hall, but just 5% to remain on the ballot, for up to 15 years. Over that course of time, the voting pool will change, as could the attitude of the electorate. New information may emerge about candidates that could steer voters in a new direction.

But what do we know now, about both the ballot newcomers and the holdovers?

It's up to each voter to decide whether to ignore the cloud of PED use, or punish a candidate for his doping, suspected or otherwise. We're not here today to cast judgment on the proper route.

Rather, here's a user's guide to the users, suspected and otherwise, that voters will be basing their ballots upon.

Keep it close at hand. Some debates may not go away for the next 15 years.

No-doubters

Rafael Palmeiro: Tested positive for Stanolozol in 2005, the first whale nailed by baseball's drug-testing program. His 3,020 career hits and 569 home runs would make him a Hall lock; instead, his positive test -- and sanctimonious denials of PED use in a 2005 congressional hearing -- reduced him to vote totals of 11% and 12.6% his first two years on the ballot.

Mark McGwire: His nebulous testimony about steroid use in the same hearing that set Palmeiro up for his fall from grace all but discounted his 583 career home runs. McGwire peaked at 23.7% of the vote in 2010. Coming clean did not help his cause, either. After admitting in January 2010 he took steroids and growth hormone in his career, McGwire's total dipped to 19% each of the next two years.

Legally ensnared

Barry Bonds: Bonds dodged a perjury conviction in a federal trial related to his testimony in the BALCO doping scandal but was convicted of obstruction of justice, a conviction that is still under appeal. However, the crux of that trial was based on whether he "knowingly" took steroids. Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, was jailed on numerous occasions for refusing to testify against Bonds. The book Game of Shadows breaks down in excruciating detail the arc of Bonds' alleged used, which it claims began after the 1998 season. Those details have not been credibly disputed. For what it's worth, Bonds had a near-Hall of Fame career (411 home runs, 445 steals, a .996 OPS) from 1986-98, years in which he was ostensibly clean. By the time his 22-year career wrapped up in 2007, he had a record 762 home runs and a 1.051 OPS.

Roger Clemens: The biggest name ensnared in baseball's 2007 Mitchell Report on PED use, Clemens will learn this year if his successful fight to avoid federal perjury charges -- and his seven Cy Young Awards -- resonate with voters more than allegations from his former trainer that he took steroids and growth hormone between the years of 1998-2001. Clemens won 354 games over his career, including 213 wins and four Cy Young Awards before he supposedly started using PEDs. But voters must weigh whether the allegations leveled by Brian McNamee -- at least partially corroborated by former teammate Andy Pettitte -- resonate more than Clemens' June 2012 acquittal on six charges of lying to Congress and obstruction. Clemens sued McNamee for defamation in 2008, a suit eventually dismissed by a series of federal judges. McNamee's defamation suit against Clemens, filed in 2009, is still winding through the legal process in New York.

Circumstantially linked

Sammy Sosa: McGwire was admittedly doped up when he slugged a then-record 70 home runs in 1998. The only player who could keep pace with him? Sosa, who finished with 66. Seven years later, they both testified before Congress about PED use. While Sosa came out a bit better than McGwire, his suddenly faulty English and statement that he had not "broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic," where steroids can be legally purchased, did not help his cause. Sosa's statement that he "never took performance-enhancing drugs" was investigated by a House committee in 2010 after a New York Times report said he was among a group of players who tested positive for steroids in 2003 survey testing. But the House panel did not recommend the Department of Justice investigate Sosa, perhaps in part because of a five-year statute of limitations on such investigations.

Nothing but whispers

Jeff Bagwell: There has been no evidence that Bagwell used PEDs during a career in which he hit 449 home runs, had a .297 batting average, won an MVP award and finished in the top three two other times, all easily Hall credentials. In fact, his career Wins Above Replacement (WAR) put him in elite, sure-fire Hall territory. But his bulky physique and the large disconnect between his minor-league and major league production (he hit six home runs in 731 minor-league at-bats) have tailed him. Bagwell received 42% and 56% of the vote his first two years on the ballot, and barring any PED evidence emerging, figures to eventually win election. But in a 2010 interview with ESPN.com, Bagwell seemed to sense that he might be a victim of his era when it came to Hall of Fame voting. "I know a lot of people are saying, 'His body got bigger.'" Bagwell said then. "Well, if you're eating 30 pounds of meat every single day and you're working out and bench pressing, you're going to get bigger. You can go to every single trainer and they'll say, 'He was the first here and last to leave, and that dude worked his ass off.'"

Mike Piazza: Like Bagwell, Piazza had famously modest amateur credentials -- he was drafted in the 62nd round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988. Then, he developed into arguably the greatest-hitting catcher of all time as baseball's steroid era blossomed. That's put him in the crosshairs of suspicion, though he has publicly denied using PEDs. One on-the-record assertion that Piazza doped came in Jeff Pearlman's 2009 book on Clemens, The Rocket Who Fell To Earth. Reggie Jefferson, a major league first baseman/outfielder from 1991-99, said Piazza's use was widely assumed by his peers. "He's a guy who did it, and everybody knows it,"Jefferson said. "It's amazing how all these names, like Roger Clemens, are brought up, yet Mike Piazza goes untouched."

Hall ballot deep in big league accomplishments

First-timers Bonds, Clemens, Biggio, Sosa, Piazza there to challenge closing-in Morris
Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com | 11/28/12
http://mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121124&content_id=40406376

The newly released 2013 National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is rich in numbers and deep in talent:

• Barry Bonds, the all-time home run leader with 762.

• Roger Clemens, a storied right-hander with 354 wins.

• Craig Biggio, a second baseman with 3,060 hits.

• Sammy Sosa, the only slugger to bash more than 60 homers in three different seasons and who totaled 609.

• Mike Piazza, who hit 396 of his 427 homers as a catcher -- the most of any player at that position in Major League history.

• Curt Schilling, winner of 216 regular-season games and 11 more in the postseason.

• Jack Morris, a starter who so dominated the American League during one decade that he's now on the cusp of immortality in his 14th try.

The ballot that members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America will contemplate during the month of December, though, is not simply about career numbers. This year's voting -- with the addition of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa in particular -- brings further attention to baseball's era played under the cloud of performance-enhancement questions.

"It's going to be a very interesting ballot and I know the writers are going to have some tough decisions to make," said Morris, who finished with 66.7 percent of the vote in the last balloting "Unfortunately, they are going to have to be the moral police and I don't think a lot of them want to be. Hopefully it will work out the right way and it will be the right thing when it's all said and done."

As all Baseball Hall of Fame votes are conducted, a candidate needs to be named on at least 75 percent of the ballots to be elected. BBWAA members with 10 consecutive years or more of covering the sport are eligible to vote and they can name as many as 10 players on their ballots. The results of the voting will be announced on Jan. 9. MLB.com will air a live simulcast of MLB Network coverage of the announcement.

Those elected, if any, will be inducted into the Hall during the annual ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 28. They will be joined posthumously on that day by anyone selected by the pre-integration Veterans Committee. The winners of the Ford C. Frick Award for meritorious contributions to baseball announcing and the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for excellence in baseball writing will be honored on July 27 at Doubleday Field.

Anyone named by the Veterans Committee -- plus the two award winners -- will be announced at the Winter Meetings, to be held in Nashville, Tenn., from Dec. 3-6.

Morris, who had 254 career wins during his 18-year career -- an American League-best 162 of them during the 1980s -- tops a list of returnees that includes, among others, Jeff Bagwell, Lee Smith, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell and Edgar Martinez.

Morris is hoping that his 14th year on the ballot will be the charm. He fell 48 votes shy of election for the Class of 2012, in which Reds shortstop Barry Larkin was the only player elected by the BBWAA. In recent votes, Burt Blyleven was elected to the Hall in his 14th year, Jim Rice in his 15th year and Bruce Sutter in his 13th.

All of this is setting an optimistic course for Morris.

"That's the beauty of the waiting process; the fact that there is time," Morris said. "If it was one vote and you're gone, there would be a lot more guys in or a lot more out. I've always said this: the guys who are in, they deserve to be in. There may be a few guys who aren't in who deserve to be in. There's never going to be a perfect system. You can't really change it to make it perfect."

Among the first-timers, Biggio would seem to be on a clear course toward a plaque because 3,000 hits is almost a certain ticket to the hallowed Hall. Of the 26 other retired players who amassed 3,000 or more hits, only two are not in the Hall and both have extenuating circumstances. One is Rafael Palmiero, who finished with 3,020 hits and 569 homers but garnered 12.6 percent in his second year on the ballot after being suspended for a positive steroid test in 2005, his last season in the Major Leagues. The other is Pete Rose, the all-time leader with 4,256 hits who is banned from baseball because of gambling and is not eligible to be included on Hall of Fame ballots.

Biggio played 20 seasons, all for the Astros. He batted .281 as a catcher, outfielder and second baseman; he played 1,989 of his 2,780 games at second base.

"It would be a very, very rewarding feeling if it was to happen," said Biggio, who has been a high school coach and a special assistant to the general manager for the Astros since his retirement in 2007. "I'll just cross my fingers and hopefully next year, come Jan. 9, I'll get a phone call."

Bonds played 22 seasons for the Pirates and Giants and holds the all-time records for homers in a career and a single season (73), plus walks (2,558) and intentional walks (688). By even the metrics of today, Bonds is third in overall WAR (Wins Above Replacement) behind Babe Ruth and Cy Young, third in offensive WAR, sixth with a .444 on-base percentage, sixth with a .607 slugging percentage and fourth with a 1.051 OPS, which combines on-base and slugging percentages. He won the National League MVP seven times, three times before 1998, the demarcation line for when many believe the so-called streoids era began.

"I gave to that game," Bonds said recently. "I know how many games I played, how many years I put in, how many hours I put in, how much time I've worked, how hard I've worked and I am never, never, ever going to justify that part of my life. And it was a great part of my life. ... "

"This is an exceptional group of players," he said. "... We're always going to respect each other as athletes."

Clemens, who pitched for the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Astros during a 24-year career, is ninth in career victories, one shy of Gregg Maddux, the top winning pitcher in their era with 355. He is third with 4,672 strikeouts behind Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. His career WAR ranks eighth for all players and third among pitchers behind Young and Walter Johnson, the pitchers with the most wins in history. Clemens was the AL MVP and won the Cy Young in 1986 for the Red Sox. He captured the Cy Young Award seven times, six of them in the AL, four of them prior to 1998.

Sosa hit 66 homers for the Cubs in 1998, the year of the feverish home run race with Mark McGwire to break Roger Maris' record of 61, set in 1961. McGwire finished with 70, a record that was broken three years later by Bonds. During that '98 season, Sosa led the National League with 158 RBIs and was named the NL's MVP. His home run hitting didn't end there. Sosa hit 63 in 1999, 64 in 2001 and led the league with 50 in 2000 and 49 in 2002. During that five-year period from 1998-2002, Sosa hit 292 homers.

Piazza ranks fifth offensively among the top nine catchers, six of them Hall of Famers. He hit .308 and was a 12-time All-Star, winning Rookie of the Year honors with the Dodgers in 1993. He was MVP of the 1996 All-Star Game in Philadelphia.

Schilling and Randy Johnson were the co-MVPs of the 2001 World Series as their D-backs defeated the Yankees in seven games. Schilling's regular-season record of 216-146 with a 3.46 ERA is not particularly Hall-worthy, but his 11-2 record and 2.23 ERA in 19 postseason starts for the Phillies, D-backs and Red Sox certainly stand out.

Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.07 ERA in seven World Series starts, also winning it all with Boston in 2004 and '07. In 2004, he created postseason lore by pitching against the Yankees with such a serious foot injury that blood soaked his baseball sock.

Baseball Hall of Fame ballot 2013

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa debut
11-28-12
http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-11-28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-2013-barry-bonds-roger-clemens-sammy-sosa-ped-eligi

The Baseball Writers’ Association has unveiled its 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, which, as expected, is full of controversial first-time candidates.

Among the first-timers with proven or suspected ties to performance-enhancing drugs are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa. All have put up Hall-worthy numbers (Bonds is the all-time home run king; Clemens ranks third all time in strikeouts and ninth all time in wins; and Sosa is eighth all time in homers), but the steroids stigma hangs over them.

The ball now is in the hands of the more than 600 voters, who thus far have shown no willingness to give PED-tainted candidates anywhere close to the 75 percent of the vote required for induction. Mark McGwire’s best showing came in 2010 when he got 23.7 percent of the vote.

More details about the 2013 ballot:

The 24 newcomers

Sandy Alomar Jr., Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Roger Clemens, Jeff Conine, Steve Finley, Julio Franco, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Kenny Lofton, Jose Mesa, Mike Piazza, Reggie Sanders, Curt Schilling, Aaron Sele, Sammy Sosa, Mike Stanton, Todd Walker, David Wells, Rondell White, Woody Williams.

The 13 returning candidates

Jack Morris (14th time eligible, named on 66.7 percent of ballots last year); Jeff Bagwell (3rd, 56.0 percent); Lee Smith (11th, 50.6 percent); Tim Raines (6th, 48.7 percent); Alan Trammell (12th, 36.8 percent); Edgar Martinez (4th, 36.5 percent); Fred McGriff (4th, 23.9 percent); Larry Walker (3rd, 22.9 percent); Mark McGwire (7th, 19.5 percent); Don Mattingly (13th, 17.8 percent); Dale Murphy (15th, 14.5 percent); Rafael Palmeiro (3rd, 12.6 percent); Bernie Williams (2nd, 9.6 percent)

The process

The results of the vote will be announced Jan. 9, with the Hall of Fame induction ceremony set for July 28 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Hall of Famer Duke Snider, 84, dies

Tony Jackson
ESPNLosAngeles.com
February 27, 2011
http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/news/story?id=6164805

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Duke Snider, the longtime center fielder for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980, died on Sunday morning following an undisclosed illness, both the Dodgers and the Baseball Hall of Fame have announced. He was 84.

Snider was the Dodgers' primary center fielder from 1947-62 and generally is considered one of the greatest among a long line of superb players who have worn the Dodgers uniform during the franchise's long, storied history. An eight-time All-Star, he still ranks as the franchise's all-time leader in home runs (389) and runs batted in (1,271). He led all major leaguers in the decade of the 1950s with 326 homers and 1,031 RBIs, and he hit four home runs in each of the 1952 and 1955 World Series.

Snider hit .320 with four homers and seven RBIs in the seven-game victory over the New York Yankees in the '55 World Series, giving the Dodgers their first world championship and the only one they would win in Brooklyn before moving three years later to Los Angeles.

"He was an extremely gifted talent, and his defensive abilities were often overlooked because of playing in a small ballpark, Ebbets Field," Vin Scully, the Dodgers' Hall of Fame broadcaster, said in a statement issued by the club. "When he had a chance to run and move defensively, he had the grace and the abilities of [fellow Hall of Famers Joe] DiMaggio and [Willie] Mays, and of course, he was a World Series hero that will forever be remembered in the borough of Brooklyn.

"Although it's ironic to say it, we have lost a giant."

Edwin Donald Snider, who was given the nickname "Duke" by his father when he was 5, was born in Los Angeles on Sept. 19, 1926. He played football, baseball and basketball at Compton High School before being signed by the Dodgers in 1943. In 16 years with the Dodgers, he batted .300 with a .385 on-base percentage and scored 1,199 runs.

Snider was sold to the New York Mets before the 1963 season, then to the San Francisco Giants a year later before he retired after 1964 with a career average of .295 with 407 home runs and 1,333 RBIs.

"I was Duke's teammate and looked up to him with respect," said Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, who was a young pitcher with the club during Snider's best seasons in Brooklyn. "Duke was not only a great player, but he was a great person, too. He loved his family and loved the Dodgers. He was the true Dodger and represented the Dodgers to the highest degree of class, dignity and character.

"He was my teammate and friend, and I will really miss him."

Snider died at the Valle Vista Convalescent Hospital in Escondido.

Tony Jackson covers the Dodgers for ESPNLosAngeles.com.

Hall of Famer Feller passes away at 92

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20101208&content_id=16282782
Hall of Famer Feller passes away at 92
Marty Noble
12/15/10

He reveled in what he had been and all he had accomplished and often seemed to celebrate himself. He spoke in the first person -- singular and plural -- more often than most and occasionally wore out the vertical pronoun. Once, his powerful right arm threw a baseball past any batter. For decades after he threw his final pitch, he seemed to use that arm to pat himself on the back.

Bob Feller never boasted, though.

He spoke the truth and varnished it only with additional fact. As one of the game's last, high-profile representatives of the Great Depression and the Greatest Generation, Rapid Robert Feller shared stories of baseball, patriotism, his searing fastball, war and life, not to enhance his image, but to make his point, that being: Our way is the right way, the best way. And he considered his remarkable red, white and blue life compelling evidence of that assertion.

Few who have played the game have been so prideful as Feller was for most of his 92 years. And few could back it up so convincingly as he did. Now his crackling Midwestern voice is silent, and today, the day of his passing, it is the game itself that revels in what he was and all he accomplished. Baseball unabashedly boasts about him.

Feller's passing, the result of problems related to leukemia, occurred in the same calendar year as the deaths of fellow Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts and Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Yankee Stadium public-address announcer Bob Sheppard, Tigers and Mariners play-by-play men Ernie Harwell and Dave Niehaus, Cubs hero Ron Santo, New York baseball celebrities Bobby Thomson, Gil McDougald, Ralph Houk, Gene Hermanski, Clyde King and Billy Loes, celebrated pitchers Mike Cuellar, Jim Bibby and Jose Lima, speedster outfielder Willie Davis and brash manager Bobby Bragan.

Robert William Feller, a man's man, a patriot's patriot and model power pitcher, lived more than half his life, 48 years, as a baseball Hall of Famer following an 18-season career with the Indians that was extraordinary even for a member of the game's elite. From his days on a farm in Iowa, he forged an image that featured a strong back, a rigid backbone, Midwestern values and zealous flag-waving. Baseball was secondary, Feller said. And he practiced what he preached, neglecting his career to protect his values and his nation, though he understood the mound and his baseball afterlife were effective forums for his views.

"More impressive than his vast accomplishments on the field was being part of 'The Greatest Generation,'" said MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. "Bob was one of the first Major Leaguers to enlist following Pearl Harbor and served our country for nearly four years during the prime of his career. Bob Feller was a great pitcher, but he was first and foremost a great American."

His baseball image stands in contrast to the images of today's players. As the game became less demanding of its participants in the past 50 years, Feller stood out as a throwback to when pitchers finished what they started, routinely moved batters off the plate, hit them if they declined to retreat and ignored pain, fatigue and hitters' resumés. He was a baseball Lombardi.

In all the years that have passed since his prime, the game has developed few others like Feller. Moreover, the country doesn't have many who stand as proudly as he stood, beating his chest relentlessly, not unlike the tom-tom beat in the home parks of his Indians.

Feller was as unyielding on the mound as he was politically. He considered himself a primary representative of the irresistible force, once saying "I threw my best pitch if I needed an out. If it happened to be [the hitter's] favorite pitch, he still got it, and I took my chances. I always liked my chances."

The greatest player in the history of the Indians believed in sweat, firm handshakes and unfiltered speech. When he spoke, his voice filled the room; he seemed to emphasize every word. He apologized as often as he backed off. "No need to if you've got it right," he said in Cooperstown in July.

Feller preferred "steadfast" to "stubborn" as an adjective applied to him, but he hardly shrunk away from the latter. "I am proud of who I am and what I stand for," he said that day in upstate New York. "I'm pretty sure about what this country is and was and what it should be. I don't think I have the wrong idea. I'm behind it, always have been, because it's the best way to live."
* * *
A fastball, known to touch three-digits and called "The Heater from Van Meter," was Feller's primary weapon. It served him well and routinely overwhelmed American League hitters. Born in Van Meter, Iowa, in 1918, Feller made his big league debut in 1936, four months before his 18th birthday and without professional experience. Before the birthday passed, he had won five games, lost three and produced starts of 15, 10, 17 and 10 strikeouts, five complete games, a 3.34 ERA and quite a reputation.

Before his career ended on Sept. 30, 1956, months before the inaugural Cy Young Award was presented, he had won 266 games, struck out 2,581 batters, won 62 percent of his decisions, pitched three no-hitters, 12 one-hitters and 44 shutouts and won a pitchers' Triple Crown. He led the league in victories six times and strikeouts seven times.

He produced those numbers despite missing nearly four seasons because of military service. His hitch in the Navy -- Feller enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor -- began after he had led the AL in victories for three seasons -- 24, 27 and 25 in 1939-1941 -- and before he led two more times with 26 and 20 in 1946 and 1947. He won 22 games in 1951, 12 years after the first of his six 20-win seasons. One can only imagine where four more full seasons, even if they were pedestrian, would have put his final numbers.

And as intriguing as his won-loss record remains, consider Feller's remarkable achievements as the game's foremost strikeout pitcher of the era. If not for his time in the service, he might have worn out another letter, K, and left it unavailable for Herb Score, Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden, et al. Though he forfeited at least 110 starts, Feller struck out 1,774 batters from 1938-48. No other pitcher struck out more than 1,488 in that 11-season sequence. And the two closest to him in strikeouts pitched almost regularly through those 11 seasons.

Feller's election to the Hall of Fame was all but automatic. He was elected in 1962, his first year of eligibility, his name checked on 93.8 percent of the ballots cast by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, the fourth highest percentage at the time. Only three position players -- Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner, members of the first class in 1936 -- had received higher percentages. Ten others with percentages higher than Feller's have since been elected, beginning in 1982: Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, George Brett, Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Johnny Bench, Carl Yastrzemski, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron.

He is the lone Chief Petty Officer in the Hall of Fame, a distinction he relished.

Feller developed his pitching power doing chores on the farm. When he was 13, a tract of the farmland he worked was set aside by his father Bill, who built his first child a baseball field, replete with stands and a scoreboard. It was there where the boy learned his trade and first polished his skills. "What kid wouldn't enjoy the life I led in Iowa?" he once said. "Baseball and farming, and I had the best of both worlds."

Even with his young prowess, Feller was signed by scout Cy Slapnicka for merely a dollar and an autographed baseball in 1936, when he was 17. He left the farm behind shortly thereafter, making his big league debut and the first of his 86 career relief appearances on July 19 in Washington. He walked two and struck out none in a scoreless inning in an Indians loss. He made five more relief appearances, pitching seven innings, walking six and striking out six, before he made his first start, a 15-strikeout, complete-game victory against the St. Louis Browns. He walked four in that game.

Bases on balls were an issue. Feller led the league in walks four times, allowing 208 in 1938. He twice walked 11 in a game, but one instance occurred in a 13-inning start in 1941. He walked eight or more 20 times, eight of them in 1938.

His finest seasons were 1940 and 1946, the latter his first full season after his discharge from the Navy. Feller won 27 games, a career high, in 1940, producing a 2.61 ERA and striking out 261. He led the league in each category and in innings, 320 1/3. And he pitched a no-hitter on Opening Day, the only one ever on an Opening Day, against the White Sox.

His 348-strikeout season came in '46. He started 42 games, completed 36, pitched 10 shutouts and 371 1/3 innings and produced a 26-15 record and career-low 2.18 ERA.

All that success aside, Feller would say his time in the Navy was more rewarding than his baseball career. He did say this: "Baseball in the Navy always was much more fun than it had been in the Major Leagues." And he insisted that he regretted no part of putting his baseball career on hold to serve his country. "Anything else would be selfish," he said.

Moreover, he didn't consider himself a war hero. After his return to baseball in 1945, he said "I'm no hero. Heroes don't come back. Survivors return home. Heroes never come home. If anyone thinks I'm a hero, I'm not."

But a baseball hero? Feller couldn't deny that. And he didn't.

Marty Noble is a reporter for http://www.mlb.com/. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson dead at 76

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/feed/2010-11/sparky-anderson-dies/story/hall-of-fame-manager-sparky-anderson-dead-at-76

Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson dead at 76
Sporting News
11-4-10

Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson died Thursday at the age of 76.

Anderson's family announced Wednesday that Anderson had been placed in the care of hospice at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., for complications resulting from dementia.

A statement released by Anderson's family Wednesday said: "The Anderson family -- wife Carol, sons Lee and Albert, and daughter Shirley Englebrecht -- wishes to express appreciation to all friends and fans for the support and kindness they have shown throughout Sparky's career and retirement. The family is particularly grateful for the respect for privacy the national and local media have demonstrated during this trying period."

Anderson managed the legendary Big Red Machine-era Reds to World Series titles in 1975 and 1976, and guided the Tigers to the 1984 World Series championship. He was the first manager to win the World Series with a National League team and an American League team.

In all, he managed five pennant winners and seven division winners during his career, which began in 1970 with the Reds, when he was just 36. Anderson won manager of the year honors in 1984 and 1987, and was named Sporting News' AL manager of the year in 1987.

In his 26 seasons as a major league manager, he was 2,194-1,834. He ranks sixth on the all-time wins list and last managed in 1995 with Detroit.

George Lee Anderson was born in 1934 in South Dakota and attended high school in Los Angeles. He signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers out of high school in 1953. His major-league playing career consisted of two games for the 1959 Phillies.

A light-hitting middle infielder, Anderson played in the minors for 10 years before beginning his minor-league managerial career in 1964.

"Sparky's like Ernie Banks--you finally realize it's no act, it's who he is, and it's all good," Tom Callahan, a Cincinnati columnist during the Reds' glory years, told Sporting News in 2000, the year he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Dawson, Herzog and Harvey inducted into BB HOF

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AnXNmDybytcZKF0ywsYEWVsRvLYF?slug=ap-halloffameinductions

Dawson, Herzog and Harvey inducted into BB HOF
By JOHN KEKIS, AP Sports Writer
7-25-10

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — “The Hawk” has landed in Cooperstown.

Andre Dawson, who endured 12 knee surgeries to forge an impressive 21-year major league career, was inducted Sunday into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, becoming just the 203rd player in the game’s long history to receive the honor.

“Thank you for welcoming this rookie to your team” said Dawson, who played for a decade in Montreal before signing with the Chicago Cubs as a free agent. “It’s an honor beyond words. I didn’t play this game with this goal in mind, but I’m living proof that if you love this game, the game will love you back. I am proof that any young person who can hear my voice right now can be standing here as I am.”

The 56-year-old Dawson took the podium as Cubs and Expos fans roared their approval and began his speech by thanking his loyal fans from both cities. He then poked fun at several Hall of Famers on the stage behind him.

“Tom Lasorda, he taught me how to get a free meal. You gotta love Tommy,” Dawson said of the former Los Angeles Dodgers manager. “You eat half your meal, then complain and get a whole new free one.”

Dawson, an All-Star eight times who had 438 homers, 2,774 hits, 1,591 RBIs and 314 stolen bases in his career from 1976-96, then got serious, warning players not to be lured to the dark side of using performance-enhancing drugs.

“There’s nothing wrong with the game of baseball,” said Dawson, one of just three players to hit 400 homers and steal 300 bases. “Baseball will, from time to time like anything else in life, fall victim to the mistakes that people make. It’s not pleasant and it’s not right. Individuals have chosen the wrong road, and they’re choosing that as their legacy. Those mistakes have hurt the game and taken a toll on all of us.

“Others still have a chance to choose theirs. Do not be lured to the dark side,” he cautioned. “It’s a stain on the game, a stain gradually being removed.”

Dawson was part of a class that included former manager Whitey Herzog, umpire Doug Harvey, broadcaster Jon Miller and sports writer Bill Madden. The ceremony also honored Rock and Roll Hall of Famer John Fogerty, who sang his classic song “Centerfield.”

Fogerty wrote the tune 25 years ago and it had been played at the start of induction Sunday for more than a decade.

“I’m truly honored,” Fogerty said after playing the song on his guitar “Slugger,” which is shaped like a baseball bat and went on display later in the day inside the Hall of Fame. “I wrote that as an 8-year-old boy. That 8-year-old boy right now is saying, ‘It ain’t getting any better than this.’ “

Herzog, 78, who played eight nondescript years for four teams, managed for 18 seasons, 11 with the St. Louis Cardinals after stints in Texas, California and Kansas City. He guided the Royals to three consecutive playoff appearances in the 1970s and led the Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title just two years after he was hired.

The Cards also made World Series appearances in 1985 and 1987 under Herzog, who finished his managing career in 1990 with a record of 1,279-1,123, a .532 winning percentage.

“Ever since I was elected in December, people have asked, ‘What’s it feel like to be a Hall of Famer?”’ Herzog said. “Now I can tell you what it feels like. It feels like going to heaven before you die.”

As he has so often in the past, Herzog credited Casey Stengel, the Hall of Fame manager of the New York Yankees and Mets, with much of his success.

“Casey told me so many things that became valuable,” Herzog said. “For some reason, he knew that I was going to be a big league manager. My high school teachers would have died if they’d heard him say that. He had his own language. It took me hours sometimes to figure him out.”

The 80-year-old Harvey, who worked in the National League from 1962 to 1992, called 4,673 regular-season games during his major-league career and also umpired five World Series, six All-Star Games and nine National League Championship Series.

Nicknamed “God” during his heyday because of his authoritative, no-nonsense demeanor on the field, Harvey lived up to the moniker on his special day.

Suffering from throat cancer, Harvey recorded his 20-minute acceptance speech in the spring. It began raining while the video was playing, but by the time he addressed the crowd the sun was shining.

“I want you to notice that I stopped the rain,” he deadpanned in closing.

Harvey, the ninth umpire to be inducted and the first living umpire inducted since Al Barlick in 1989, joked afterward that “I had less rainouts than anyone else in the world.”

“My only ambition has been to improve the profession,” said Harvey, who learned from his father and didn’t attend umpiring school because he couldn’t afford it. “I’ve tried to mentor, teaching them everyting I know about the game.”

Harvey clearly was touched by the honor.

“If you’re a true baseball fan, you need to visit Cooperstown,” he said. “This is home, and you need to touch home. I’ll be watching to make sure you do.”

Andre Dawson elected to baseball Hall of Fame

http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/baseball/story/1412251.html

Miami's Andre Dawson finally elected to baseball Hall of Fame
CLARK SPENCER
cspencer@MiamiHerald.com
Wednesday, 01.06.10

Andre Dawson is headed to Cooperstown.

On Wednesday, the Miami native got the phone call he has been waiting nine years to receive, the one delivering the news of his election to baseball's Hall of Fame.

Dawson, 55, was the only player elected this year, receiving 420 votes out of 539 ballots cast (77.9 percent).

Dawson had fallen short of election his previous eight years on the ballot.

But after finishing with 67 percent of the vote last year, he finally crossed the 75 percent barrier necessary for enshrinement with baseball's all-time greats.

Dawson spent 21 seasons in the majors, most with the Montreal Expos and Chicago Cubs, before ending his playing career in 1996 with the Marlins.

Now an executive with his hometown team, Dawson is the first Marlins player to make it to the Hall of Fame.

Dawson grew up in South Florida, graduating from Southwest Miami Senior High and Florida A&M University.

Meanwhile, Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar fell short of earning baseball's highest honor.

Blyleven had 400 votes (74.2 percent), up from 338 last year, and the pitcher will likely get in because he has two more tries on the BBWAA ballot. The highest percentage for a player who wasn't elected in a later year was 63.4 by Gil Hodges in 1983, his final time on the ballot.

``Hopefully, next year will be my time,'' Blyleven said in an interview on MLB Network.

Alomar received 397 votes (73.7 percent) in the second baseman's first appearance and was followed by pitcher Jack Morris with 282 (52.3 percent), a big rise from his 237 last year.

``I feel disappointed, but next year hopefully I make it in,'' Alomar said at his home in New York. ``At least I was close.''

Cincinnati shortstop Barry Larkin, also making his first appearance, 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). Martinez, on the ballot for the first time, is viewed as an early test of how voters will receive players who were primarily designated hitters.

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. Eighth on the career list with 583 homers, he has been stigmatized since evading questions from Congress in 2005 about steroids use.

Dawson will be inducted July 25 at Cooperstown along with manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey, elected last month by the Veterans Committee.

This report was supplemented with material from Herald wire services.

Henderson and Rice together forever

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/wires/07/23/2010.ap.bbo.hall.of.fame.adv25.1338/

Thursday July 23, 2009
Henderson and Rice together forever

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. (AP) - Rickey Henderson knew what was expected every time he batted. So, too, did Jim Rice.

"Some way, I was going to scratch to get on base to steal that base,'' Henderson said. "I steal that base, my day was good. My pride and joy was coming across the plate.''

Said Rice: "Believe me, I wasn't paid to walk. I was paid to try to do some damage.''

Each player - Henderson, the quintessential leadoff man with an infectious smile, and Rice, the consummate power hitter with an icy glare - inflicted more than his share of damage on opponents, and they will be duly recognized for their considerable career accomplishments Sunday when they are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The pair will be the first inductees to primarily play left field since Boston's Carl Yastrzemski went into the Hall in 1989.

Former Yankees and Indians second baseman Joe Gordon, elected posthumously by the Veterans Committee, also will be inducted, while former Yankees star and longtime broadcaster Tony Kubek and writer Nick Peters will be honored as winners of the Frick and Spink awards, respectively.

"As a kid, you grow up playing the game, and you never really know what you can achieve,'' Henderson said.

A member of nine teams during his 25-year career, the fun-loving Henderson achieved more than most. He holds the all-time records for stolen bases in a season (130) and career (1,406), for runs scored (2,295) and for leading off a game with a home run (81).

"Competing against myself - I think that's what made me the player that I became,'' Henderson said. "I had a lot of desire to be a winner and play the game to the fullest.''

Born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1958, Henderson moved with his family to California when he was 7 and became a three-sport star at Oakland Technical High School. Football was his forte and he received numerous scholarship offers to play college ball, turning them down for a shot at baseball.

Henderson was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the fourth round in 1976. After excelling in the minors for three seasons (at Modesto, in 1977, he led the California League with a then-record 95 steals and became just the fourth professional player to steal seven bases in one game), Henderson made his major league debut with Oakland in late June 1979. He still led the club that season with 33 steals.

When Oakland owner Charlie Finley hired Billy Martin as manager in 1980, Henderson had the perfect partner in crime. "Billyball'' - the aggressive attack Martin relished - helped catapult Henderson to stardom.

The speedy Henderson set the American League season steals record with 100 in only his second year, joining Maury Wills and Lou Brock as the only major league players of the modern era to steal 100 or more bases a season.

"I went out there and put it together, but it wasn't just me,'' said Henderson, who eclipsed the AL record of 96 set by Ty Cobb in 1915. "Billy helped teach me how to win. He had a strategy and we worked together and achieved that. There was no doubt I was gone when you told me to go.''

Henderson quickly evolved into perhaps the most dangerous player in baseball, seemingly always able to make something from nothing. After leading the AL in hits during the strike-shortened 1981 season, the "Man of Steal'' used his trademark headfirst slides to break Brock's single-season steals record with 130 in 1982.

After the 1984 season, Henderson was traded to the New York Yankees and soon was reunited with Martin after Yogi Berra was fired as manager.

Henderson hit 24 homers and batted .314 with a league-leading 80 stolen bases in 1985, and his 146 runs scored were the most since Ted Williams had 150 in 1949.

The 5-foot-10, 195-pound Henderson gained at the plate by shrinking into a tight crouch, dramatically cutting his strike zone and confounding pitchers like no other player.

"Rickey just made it impossible not to be distracted by him,'' said Tony La Russa, who managed Henderson at Oakland and dreaded managing against him.

Just the 44th player elected to the Hall in his first year of eligibility, Henderson retired with 2,190 career walks (128 more than Babe Ruth), and although Barry Bonds has since eclipsed that total, Henderson still holds the record for most unintentional walks with 2,129. What is most amazing is that 796 of those free passes - or 37 percent - came while leading off an inning, something every opposing pitcher and catcher desperately wanted to avoid.

"I had a strategy of my strike zone and how can I beat a pitcher, and I think I was more patient,'' said Henderson, who broke Cobb's record of 2,246 career runs and Zack Wheat's record of 2,328 career games in left field. "I loved battling against a pitcher.''

The flamboyant Henderson, who during his career frequently referred to himself in the third person and often was accused of showboating on the field with his trash talk and snatch catch - he said it was simply "Rickey being Rickey'' - also liked being paid well for his services. That led him to develop another of his fortes - leading off games with a home run.

"I'm killing myself. I was stealing all the bases, and when you had to go to arbitration they said, 'You know, only the big boys make the money,''' Henderson said. "So I got to try and figure out how to hit a home run, too.''

He learned. In 1990, Henderson matched his career high with 28 homers. He also stole 65 bases and led the majors with a .439 on-base percentage, winning AL MVP honors.

Hitting homers was second nature to Rice, who played his entire career for the Boston Red Sox. Playing at a time when offensive numbers paled in comparison to the past two decades, the so-called steroid era, Rice batted .298 with 382 home runs and 1,451 RBIs from 1974-89. He was voted to eight All-Star teams and finished in the top five in AL MVP voting six times, winning the award in 1978 when he batted .315 with 213 hits, 46 home runs, 139 RBIs and a .600 slugging percentage.

The numbers get even more impressive.

Rice drove in 100 or more runs eight times, batted over .300 seven times, and topped 200 hits four times. And he's the only player in major league history with at least 35 homers and 200 hits in three consecutive seasons (1977-79).

That it took until his final year of eligibility probably rankled every time a new class was announced. If there ever was any bitterness, though, it has long since vanished.

"You let bygones be bygones,'' the 56-year-old Rice said. "Yeah, I wish I could have gone in on the first ballot or the second, not the last. But I'm in and some guys are still out. You cherish what you have. You cherish that you're in an elite category of guys that played the game one way - hard.

"There are a lot of guys that I started with my first year in rookie ball - about 60 guys - and only one made it to the big leagues.''

Henderson says he has one regret - that he didn't retire sooner.

"You got to wait five years to go into the Hall of Fame,'' he said. "If I would have thought about it, and just went on and got them five years up early, then I'd been a little younger. Then I could have came back after I went into the Hall of Fame, but I waited too long.''

Kalas passing hits close to home

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090413&content_id=4253630

Kalas passing hits close to home
Rays' thoughts are with Todd, son of late broadcaster
By Bill Chastain / MLB.com
04/13/09

ST. PETERSBURG -- Philadelphia lost an icon when Harry Kalas died shortly after collapsing inside the Phillies' broadcast booth in Washington on Monday afternoon at age 73, while Todd Kalas, who is part of the Rays' broadcast team, lost a father.

Harry Kalas was inducted into the broadcaster's wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 2002, having won the Ford C. Frick Award, which is presented to broadcasters who've made major contributions to baseball. He had been a broadcaster for 43 years, the previous 38 with the Phillies, where he began working in 1971.

Kalas was found unconscious in the team's broadcast booth around 12:30 p.m. ET, and he was taken to George Washington University Medical Center. Team officials quickly cleared the clubhouse to talk to the players, coaches and staff.

The cause of the death is unknown, but Kalas missed the beginning of Spring Training after having an undisclosed medical procedure. He was in good spirits when he arrived in Clearwater, Fla., eager to follow the Phillies for another season.

Todd was not at Tropicana Field for the Rays' home opener against the Yankees on Monday night, but he was on the minds of members of the Rays family.

"For Todd and his family, it's just an awful moment and we send our sympathies, and I can't wait to visit with Todd in person," Rays manager Joe Maddon said.

Maddon hails from Hazleton, Pa., so he understands the magnitude of Kalas' passing.

"He was definitely a part of the culture, not only in Major League Baseball, but sports in general and definitely in that part of the world," Maddon said. "I remember listening to him growing up. And I know that people back there are going to take it very hard."

Rays play-by-play voice Dewayne Staats said Todd called him earlier on Monday to tell him his father had passed and that Todd seemed to be taking it as well as he could.

"Harry was the personification of taking his gift and doing what you're supposed to do with it," Staats said. "He enjoyed it. It's a great gift. And he made sure that he took full advantage of that, and as he transitions from this life into the next one, what better place to do it than at the ballpark, in the booth? And if Harry could have written it his way, that's exactly the way he would have written it."

Staats said he felt like he had known Harry Kalas since 1965, when Kalas called Houston Astros games.

"I was a little kid listening to him broadcast Jimmy Wynn home runs at the Astrodome," Staats said. "And his home run call was, 'And that ball is in Astros orbit.' So I feel like I've known him for a long time. And then in the mid '70s, '76 or '77, I got to know him when I joined the Astros full-time."

Staats remembered Kalas as being quick to help nurture a young broadcaster, such as himself when he first got into the business.

"Harry as a veteran broadcaster was nothing but gracious," Staats said. "He was really kind to a young broadcaster trying to feel his way. And I've always had just great warm feelings for him. So when Todd became part of our crew in the beginning, doing what he's doing, it was like, 'Yeah, that's right, that's what he should be.'"

Longtime baseball man Don Zimmer knew Kalas for many years and said simply, "He was a great man."

"I've known him as long as he's been announcing," Zimmer said. "I always saw him at ballparks, and we always kidded with each other. I saw him at restaurants, just a great guy, classy individual.

"When I walked in here and heard that news today, I couldn't believe it. My god, 73 years old, he's young. He was a great man. Everybody loved him. And I loved listening to him. I heard him call many games. It's a sad story."

Dave Wills, who is part of Tampa Bay's radio broadcast, spoke of seeing Kalas when the Rays played the Phillies in Philadelphia for their final two games of the spring.

"Obviously, he looked a little frail from having some of the issues that he suffered through during the spring," Wills said. "But I don't think anybody thought he wasn't going to be among us in a couple of weeks. It's tough. I feel for Todd and his family. And I feel for the city of Philadelphia. He was their voice. The voice of a generation and one of the great voices of this game and is going to be sorely missed."

Andy Freed, who shares the radio booth with Wills, called the situation weird.

"We're so used to thinking about everything in terms of baseball," Freed said. "But I'm thinking of Todd today as I would my own father. It's just horribly sad. I think of it as a family member would, losing your own dad and not being able to share things with him anymore."

The Phillies, who postponed their scheduled visit on Tuesday to the White House, said funeral arrangements are pending. In addition to Todd, Harry Kalas is survived by his wife, Eileen, and his other two sons, Brad and Kane.

Bill Chastain is a reporter for MLB.com. Todd Zolecki contributed to this report. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Beast of the Month - May 2008

Beast of the Month - May 2008
Roger Clemens, Cooperstown Caliber Major League Pitcher

"I yam an anti-Christ... "
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"There is no joy in Mudville."
Ernest Lawrence Thayer, “Casey at the Bat”

Okay, fine, we get it. It's no longer just about unconvincing performances before Congress by Sammy or Mac, nor is it about Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro or even Barry Bonds. Steroids is no longer the exception to the rule in baseball, it is the rule. And sorry Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.

That would be lesson after the release of the Mitchell Report, the investigative report commissioned by Major League Baseball that named at least some of the names of the steroid era, a list that still is likely the tip of the iceberg. Iceberg tip or not, the names of drug dopers could field a team of All-Stars that would hold their own against the '27 Yankees. Among the roster, besides Giambi and Bonds: 200-Game winner Kevin Brown, former Philadelphia Phillies hero Lenny Dykstra, 2003 NL Cy Young winner reliever Eric Gagne, 2002 World Series MVP Troy Glaus, two-time AL MVP Juan Gonzalez, one-time rookie sensation Wally Joyner, 1990 Rookie of the Year and postseason hero David Justice, 1987 Rookie of the Year and Gold Glove catcher Benito Santiago, 2002 AL MVP Miguel Tejada, 1995 AL MVP Mo Vaughn and 1994 home run champion Matt Williams. And though many of these revelations came with the predictable denials and no comments, the general impression is that despite it being a tad politically compromised (tellingly, the report only named players who roided up and not executives or league officials who had knowledge of the widespread abuse) Senator George Mitchell did a solid job in his investigation, and all claims could be backed up in court.

Winners in the latest juicer revelations are few and far between. One could be Mark McGwire, who, after a number of doping indictments all related to perjury, seems all the more wiser for his infamous 2005 Congressional clam-up. The other would be Barry Bonds, whose defenders can repeat their insistence he was hardly some lone wolf and that his prosecution appears to be a politically motivated vendetta. The biggest winner, however, would have to be Jose Canseco once again. Even more so than the Mitchell Report and Game of Shadows, it is Canseco who has written the definitive account of the steroid era in baseball. In 2005, when Juiced was released, he became widely reviled in the sports press as a liar and shameless opportunist for pointing the finger at other dopers and making stunning claims along the way. Three years later, nothing in his book has been disproved and much has been found to be shockingly accurate. Despite this proven track record of reporting history, the publication of his recent sequel (cleverly titled Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball) led to a repeat of attacks on Canseco's honesty and character.

Meanwhile, there is little question who is the biggest loser from the Mitchell Report. That would be Roger Clemens, The Konformist Beast of the Month, who has replaced Bonds as the poster boy for steroid cheaters.

Clemens, like Bonds was for batters, is no mere pitcher. With all due respect to Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton (or even his current competitors Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez) The Rocket was named, in a 2006 ESPN poll of baseball experts, the greatest living pitcher by an overwhelming margin. He has won a record seven Cy Young Awards (two more than Randy Johnson, his closest competitor) and is the last starting pitcher to win an MVP trophy (after he went 24-4 for the Boston Red Sox in 1986.) His career record is 354-184 (nearly a 2 to 1 won-loss ratio) and is second only to Nolan Ryan in career strikeouts. He is also one of only three pitchers to strike out 20 batters in 9 innings (the others being Randy Johnson and Cubs one-time rookie flamethrower Kerry Wood) and he's done it twice.

(Granted, this has nothing to do with the rest of the article, but all these mentions of Randy Johnson bring up a good question: does a guy named Randy Johnson really need "The Big Unit" as a nickname?)

On a personal level, members of The Konformist staff have long admired Clemens for his tenacity, even if sometimes it has gone a tad psychotic. Of special infamy was his twin encounters with Mike Piazza of the New York Mets in 2000. After Piazza hit a grand slam off The Rocket a month earlier, Clemens beaned him on the hand and head with a single pitch during a July game. Then, in Game 2 of the World Series, Clemens threw a shard of Mikey's shattered bat at Piazza, leading to a bench-clearing on both sides. Even in this bizarre moment his greatness shines through: in that game he pitched a two-hitter with 9 strikeouts in eight innings of shutout ball, a performance that effectively silenced the Mets and led to Clemens' second World Series ring with the Yankees. This followed his one-hit shutout with 15 Ks in the ALCS, in the greatest postseason pitching performance besides Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Clearly, he was the true Yankee hero of their last World Championship.

And so it is this background that makes his inclusion on the Mitchell Report so tragic. What makes it even worse is his sad and sorry response. He could've owed up to his cheating (cheating that is apparent in evidence detailed below) in a tearful confession, a move that would've earned him long-term sympathy for honesty. Or he could've simply declared "no comment" and disappeared from public view for awhile. Instead, Clemens demanded a Congressional hearing to deny his usage of steroids. And, as Oscar Wilde would warn, when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

At first, it actually seemed like a good strategy: pit Roger Clemens word and character mano a mano against his former trainer, Brian McNamee. After all, if Canseco is, for all the accuracy of his books, a dubious character, he's got nothing on the shadiness of McNamee, a man who has since admitted lying even on the testimony that implicated Clemens. It seemed likely that, given the choice between believing McNamee against the word of Clemens, Clemens would win. He even tested this strategy somewhat successfully on 60 Minutes in an embarrassing suck-up fest "interview" by Mike Wallace.

The problem with this strategy, it turned out, is it wasn't just Clemens V. McNamee. It was Clemens V. McNamee, Andy Pettitte, and Chuck Knoblauch, two other players who McNamee outed as drug dopers. Both of them have since confirmed under oath what McNamee told Senator Mitchell. Pettitte added Clemens had admitted to him in 1999-2000 that he had received HGH injections. Clemens insists that Pettitte "misremembered" the quotes.

Not only was it Clemens V. McNamee, Pettitte and Knoblauch, it was literally Clemens V. Clemens. It was revealed by McNamee (in a rather sleazy moment) that he had injected Clemens wife Debbie with HGH for a Sports Illustrated pictorial, a claim she would later confirm. So according to Roger Clemens, Pettitte, Knoblauch and even his own wife were injected with performance enhancing drugs by his own trainer, but Clemens himself, despite his own deserved reputation for being ultra-competitive, wouldn't even dream of the doing the same.

Besides the testimony, there was physical evidence to back the charges against Clemens. McNamee may be a weasel, but he sure is a sharp weasel, saving vials, syringes and gauze pads involving his injections of Clemens, evidence McNamee handed over to prosecutors in February.

It is interesting to note how the actual Congressional hearings went. The Democrats on the committee, almost to a man and woman, pounced on Clemens' admittedly flimsy defense with glee. Perhaps it was because the case Clemens made was so beyond dubious. It certainly didn't hurt that, after Kobe, Bonds and Michael Vick, finally there was a sports scandal this decade where liberals could proclaim outrage without politically correct fears of being called a racist. But perhaps the biggest reason for the Democratic Party pounding of Clemens was due to him being a friend of the Bush family, most notably Bush Senior. As it turned out, GOP members at the hearing not-so-coincidentally seemed to go out of the way to defend Clemens and bash McNamee, making this into a partisan battle. Of course, this only inflated the circus-like nature of the hearings. In the end, neither party really won: the GOP looked like shameless defenders of outwardly deceitful testimony, while the Dems looked like a sniveling group of cowards who could only press a case in the most frivolous of causes. (Perhaps the hearings are a perfect metaphor for the last eight years on the Capitol.)

Frivolous or not, the Democrat's conclusions seem pretty solid: that Clemens did indeed take performance enhancing drugs and then perjured himself repeatedly on the issue. Despite this, it seems unlikely there will be any prosecution of Clemens over this, and even if there is, rumors are floating that Bush Jr. would pardon him at the request of his daddy. (Of course, this pardon would hardly match Scooter Libby's on the Outrage-o-meter.) In any case, it is telling to contrast the Clemens saga results with the vendetta against Bonds, and wonder, politically correct or not, if race is indeed a factor for the discrepancy.

Clemens may not face the long arm of the law, but in the court of public opinion, he has suffered the biggest loss of his career. He may be the greatest living pitcher, but five years from now (when the recently retired Clemens first becomes eligible for Cooperstown) he will likely be snubbed from Baseball's Hall of Fame over the scandal. That may the least of his worries: after filing a defamation lawsuit against McNamee, claiming his stellar reputation had been tarnished by his former trainer's allegations, reporters uncovered evidence of multiple adulterous affairs by the Rocket, including one with former country music star Mindy McCready. (When asked about the news allegation, McCready replied: "I cannot refute anything in the story.") Needless to say, besides putting obvious strain on his marriage, such revelations undercut his claim that his family man image has been unfairly tarnished by the steroid scandal.

It appears the fallout of the recent steroid revelations will soon go beyond Clemens, Bonds and others. Of special note: in Vindicated, Canseco outs current New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez as someone who asked for help in finding a trainer that would supply steroids. Rodriguez, a three-time AL MVP and a likely candidate to surpass Bonds in the career home run derby, has been hyped as a player who could supposedly restore the integrity of the game. While the charge has been hysterically denounced in the sports media in a repeat of the Juiced controversy, it is important to repeat that Canseco has a proven track record of telling the ugly truths that are eventually admitted as such.

But hopefully the steroid scandal will go beyond the current scapegoating of ballplayers. Of special note: in February, former relief ace (and infamous racist ranter) John Rocker claimed MLB commissioner Bud Selig knew he failed a drug test for steroids in 2000, and that doctors for both management and the players' association advised him and other Texas Rangers on how to effectively use steroids. (Among the other players were Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez and, of course, Alex Rodriguez.) But the real issue here isn't if A-Rod, Rocker and others were drug cheats: it's that it was known and sanctioned from the highest levels of the team, the players' union and even the league itself. This is the kind of scandalous conclusions that George Mitchell, for all his meticulous work, evaded in his report. Hopefully, this complicity in the doping scandal will soon no longer be ignored.

In any case, we salute Roger Clemens as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Roger!!!

Sources:

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, ESPN.com, MLB.com, SportingNews.com and SportsIllustrated.com for help on this article

Canseco, Jose. Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.

Canseco, Jose. Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Fainaru-Wada, Mark and Williams, Lance. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports. New York: Gotham Books, 2006.

Gammons, Peter. "Ample Living Proof of Clemens' Greatness." ESPN.com 1 May 2006 <http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=gammons_peter&id=2426053>.

Mitchell, George. Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball. 13 December 2007.

Marvin Miller's absence is Cooperstown's shame

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=helyar/071204

ESPN.com: Page 2
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Marvin Miller's absence is Cooperstown's shame
By John Helyar

The Lords of Baseball never could defeat Marvin Miller; they've had to settle for snubbing him.

The longtime leader of the Major League Baseball Players Association wasn't just denied entry to the baseball Hall of Fame for the third time Sunday. He was subjected to a level of irony and cruelty no 90-year-old man should have to endure.

Among the three purportedly more worthy candidates elected in the "executive/pioneer" category was . . . Bowie Kuhn.

What?

In 1972, Marvin Miller announced the end of baseball's first strike. Recognize that ex-player standing behind him?

The late commissioner compiled a lifetime batting average of .000 against Miller in baseball's pivotal labor battles of the 1970s and '80s. As the intrepid head of the players union, Miller reshaped the sport's economics. As the inept figurehead of the owners, Kuhn tried to preserve the status quo.

And lost every time.

Now, the Hall of Fame veterans committee has done the seemingly impossible. It has made the BCS bowl process seem, by contrast, a wholly rational and transparent undertaking.

There's an argument against Miller as a builder of the game. That's exactly what the enshrinement category he was up for -- along with Kuhn, the late Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley and the late Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss, who were also elected by the committee -- was supposed to designate.

Some would call Miller a destroyer of the game. His MLBPA and his ownership foes have engaged in more labor wars (seven work stoppages) than any other sport. Fans' goodwill has been sorely tested over and over again. All that is true.

But the critics are still wrong. For my money, there are only three revolutionary figures in baseball history. Babe Ruth changed the playing of the game. Jackie Robinson changed the racial composition of the game. And Miller changed the economics of the game.

What Miller destroyed was the old way of running baseball, and not a moment too soon. He transformed MLB from a feudal state into a real business. Without the concessions he wrought at the bargaining table, MLB would have ambled along in its fine old traditions and never become the $6 billion industry it is now.

Consider what happened when he freed baseball players from the shackles of the reserve clause. In the first decade alone after winning free-agency rights in 1976, the players' average pay jumped sevenfold, from $52,300 to $369,000.

To generate enough revenues to keep pace, owners had to run their teams smarter and market the game harder. If they hadn't done so, baseball would have eventually dwindled toward irrelevance. Instead, it drew a record 79.5 million fans in 2007.

Yet the Lords of Baseball moaned and groaned about Miller and what he'd wrought, all the way to the bank. The dirty secret was that moneyball was great for business. From Reggie Jackson to Alex Rodriguez, highly paid, highly mobile superstars stimulated huge fan interest in the game. The system enhanced competitive balance, not decade-long dynasties like the old Yankees.

Bowie Kuhn, shown here in 1977, is a Hall of Famer with a .000 career batting average against the union.

The reason the Lords really and enduringly hated Miller was that he changed the balance of power. He took away their once-absolute control of the business. They continued to hate him long after his 1982 retirement, feeling he remained hugely and poisonously influential on his successor and protégé, Donald Fehr.

The continuing animus was still this close to the surface in the early 1990s, when I was interviewing owners and executives for a book on the baseball business. But more recently, I'd been thinking, naively: Well, everyone's moved on.

It's been 13 years since the last strike. It's been so peaceful that the latest collective bargaining agreement, announced during the 2006 World Series, was settled long before the usual deadline brinksmanship of MLB labor negotiations.

Now this Hall of Fame vote. It was as if a time machine had set down in Cooperstown, N.Y., and transported the veterans committee back to the 1960s, when Miller was first organizing the union and encountering owners like that new Hall of Famer O'Malley.

"Tell that Jewish boy," he once told the owners' labor negotiator, referring to Miller, "to go on back to Brooklyn."

When I called Miller at his Upper West Side apartment in New York on Monday night, he wasn't seething about the Hall of Fame vote. He was listening to the soundtrack of "Guys and Dolls" and letting his wife, Terry, handle the seething. But he, too, had a sense of deja vu.

"They seem to be the same kind of small-minded, vicious people as the owners were when I came in," he told me, though, ever the cool, rational man, he wasn't taking it personally.

"I'm only mad at myself," he said. "After the first time on the ballot, I should have just withdrawn my name from consideration. My judgment of my chances was, 'Never.'"

But Terry Miller and others talked him out of it. That first time, he drew 44 percent of the votes. And, indeed, he climbed to 63 percent the next time around, just 10 votes shy of what he needed for the 75 percent that would get him in.

Kuhn made it onto only 17 percent of the ballots in the last round of voting conducted under the old process earlier this year.

Then the Hall of Fame changed the format. Instead of allowing all Hall of Famers to vote for "veterans" nominees, it created three new panels. Nominees in the "executive/pioneer" category were no longer being considered by 81 voters, but by 12, and that group is comprised primarily of former MLB executives.

Voila! Kuhn, a longtime Hall of Fame board member, got 10 votes. Miller got three.

Vladimir Putin couldn't have done it better; Cooperstown couldn't look worse.

Miller puts it best.

"The whole thing is degrading," he said, "but not so much to me as to the rest of the Hall of Fame and the people in it."

John Helyar is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. He previously covered the business of sports for The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine and is the author of "Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball."

At Hall of Fame, Day Dedicated to Two Icons

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/sports/baseball/30halloffame.html

July 30, 2007
At Hall of Fame, Day Dedicated to Two Icons, Not Controversy
By RICHARD SANDOMIR

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y., July 29 — The induction of Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday was notable for many reasons — among them an estimated record gathering of 75,000 fans — but primarily because no one mentioned Barry Bonds’s race to supplant Hank Aaron as the career home run leader.

Not a word about baseball history at a ceremony that celebrates it.

Aaron, who rarely joins his enshrined peers at the annual induction, was not here, but 53 other Hall of Famers were. Commissioner Bud Selig was here, on a stage in a meadow, welcoming new members into the Hall and posing beside them with their plaques.

Gwynn, his suit soaked with perspiration after three hours in 82-degree heat, told reporters afterward, “What a great day today was.” Pause. “Seventy-five thousand people.” Pause. “Unbelievable.” Smile.

Ripken added: “It’s a great celebration for baseball, a way to step back from the controversy. Maybe we’ll be back to reality tomorrow.”

Their day may have been a way to suspend the reality of suspicions about Bonds’s use of performance-enhancing drugs and the mixed emotions outside San Francisco concerning his attempt to break Aaron’s record.

Or they simply preferred not to let discussions about Bonds ruin a day that they had been anticipating since their election in early January if not much earlier.

They were in for two surprises before their induction began. As they arrived at the Clark Sports Center in a bus with other Hall of Famers, they saw the makings of a huge crowd. “I didn’t know if they were kidding me, but they said, ‘Oh my God, look at all the people on the hill!’ ” Gwynn said.

And, because of the threat of thunderstorms, Gwynn and Ripken were told that they would be delivering the first and second speeches of the program, not the third and fourth, as originally scheduled.

But the storms never materialized, and under sunny skies, they could absorb the turnout with fans applauding and displaying signs like “3000 Miles for 1 Hero” and “My Son Is Named Cal Because of You.”

The fans, more of them from Baltimore than San Diego, were there for two controversy-free athletes who played their entire careers (Gwynn for 20 seasons and Ripken for 21) for one team, despite playing in an era of free agency. Ripken won a World Series with Baltimore and Gwynn’s Padres twice won the National League pennant, but both players were on two last-place teams as well..

Both men had more than 3,000 hits. Gwynn finished with a career batting average of .338. And Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s streak of 2,130 consecutive games in 1995, sitting at 2,632. “Thanks for Saving Baseball,” read a sign held aloft in an ocean of Orioles orange.

Ripken has said he never projected if his career was Hall worthy, but Gwynn did. In his speech, he said that upon getting his 2,000th hit on his mother’s birthday in 1993, he thought, “If I could get 1,000 more, I had a chance of making the Hall.”

His mother took sick in Cooperstown and could not attend.

“Don’t feel bad about not being here,” he said, hoping she was watching the coverage on ESPN Classic from her room at the Otesaga Hotel.

They have moved on in their baseball lives. Gwynn is the baseball coach at his alma mater, San Diego State, and Ripken’s businesses include running youth camps and amateur leagues. Both have been hired by TBS as analysts.

Ripken said that two weeks ago, a 10-year-old camper offered him a lesson in humility that that his father, Cal Sr., would have loved.

“He said, ‘So, did you play baseball?’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, I played professionally.’ ” The boy asked which team, and Ripken told him that he played for the Orioles.

“Which position?” the boy asked.

“Mostly shortstop but a little third base at the end,” Ripken said. “And he began to walk away and he looked back and said, ‘Should I know you?’ ”

Gwynn, who earned the nickname Mr. Padre, offered another lesson, taught by the San Diegan and Red Sox great Ted Williams when they met for the first time at the 1992 All-Star Game at Jack Murphy Stadium

“I had a bat in my hands,” he said. “He said: ‘Tony, how you doing? Give me your bat.’ I gave him my bat and he started picking his teeth with it. And if you’re worth your salt as a hitter, your mind starts to race, it starts to tick, and really what Ted really made me do, he made me think about the art of hitting a baseball.”

Gwynn finished his speech without tearing up, but Ripken choked up as he talked about his daughter, Rachel, and son, Ryan; he wiped his eyes while thanking his wife, Kelly. Then he executed a nifty Ripken-to-Ripken exchange, lifting a rose out of a jacket pocket, then asking for help from his son, who took an identical rose from his jacket pocket and handed it to his mother.

“My life in baseball,” Ripken said, “has been one giant blessing.”