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.

Why We Need A People’s History of Sports

E of S Nation: Our national (or my family’s) nightmare is over and A People’s History of Sports in the United States is now available for purchase. If you like Edge of Sports, please support the work by purchasing one or five copies of my new book A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press).

You can get in at:

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Sports-United-States/dp/1595581006/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218899209&sr=8-2

Or if you are Amazon averse, please support Labyrinth Books at:

http://www.labyrinthbooks.com/all_detail.aspx?isbn=9781595581006

Or your local bookstore.

If you read it and like it, please go to Amazon and write a review and please pass on the below column!

In struggle and sports,
Dave Z

Nothing reveals so much about us as how we play the games we play.
- Q, Star Trek

Why We Need A People’s History of Sports
By Dave Zirin

There are those who insist that sports and politics don’t belong in the same sentence, the same zip code, or the same universe.

They mouth platitudes about how these two worlds must be hermetically sealed from one another, lest the dirty world of politics infect the sanctity of the playing field. Before the 2008 Olympics, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said that "political factors" must be kept away from Beijing.

USA basketball Mike Krzyzewski chimed in, "None of these athletes (has) a responsibility to be political. They have the responsibility to represent their country." The chief of the Canadian Olympic Committee, Dick Pound, also thundered to the Canada’s Olympians, "If it is so tough for you that you can't bear not to say anything, then stay at home."

This is rank stupidity and stunning hypocricy. It’s a lie. People can say all they want that sports and politics have nothing to do with one another, but as the saying goes, “you don’t have to believe in gravity to fall out of an airplane.”

So much discussion of sports, both its past and present, is about sanding off, beautifying, or simply obliterating anything that might be seen as political.

Here is how sports history usually goes:

You have a hero - usually acting like the love child of John Wayne and Sarah Palin - with obstacles in their path. But all those obstacles are overcome with a good dose of true grit.

Whehter the autobiography of Cal Ripken or Dennis Rodman, one problem with sports history: it is hyper individualistic and completely absent of context. In other words it’s told a lot like history.

The other problem with sports history is that much of it is based on lies.

Once again, this is a lot like history. You could call it “Lies my Gym Teacher Told Me.”

Let’s take baseball. The Baseball Hall of Fame is located in beautiful All-American Cooperstown New York. Why? Because that’s where they tell us the game was invented by Army General Abner Doubleday.

There are some problems with this however. Three in fact.

The first is that the game wasn’t invented in Cooperstown.

The second is that Abner Doubleday never set foot in Cooperstown.

The third is the tiny fact that Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball.

In fact the good general didn’t know a baseball from an iPhone.

This Doubleday myth was created in 1895 by millionaire baseball owner Albert Spalding of Spalding sporting goods.

Spalding chose Cooperstown as the game’s birthplace because of its small town postcard beauty, which seemed like a better fit than the actual birthplace of baseball, Hoboken, New Jersey.

And why did Spalding tell us that General Doubleday as the game’s inventor? It played to the man’s political goals: to merge baseball with the All American virtues of patriotism and war.

As Albert Spalding announced his discovery that Doubleday was the great creator, he said:

“Baseball, I repeat, is war! And the playing of the game is a battle in which every contestant is a commanding general, wh ohaving gained an advantage, must hold it by every resource of his mind and muscle.”

Because of people like Albert Spalding, we don’t have a people’s history of sports. We have instead a bosses’ history of sports based on bluster and lies.

The real story of how the beauty of play developed into a trillion dollar business can only be understood by looking at the profound economic changes that took place as this country transitioned from a farming society, to the military and economic colossus it is today.

When this country was discovered, or conquered as the case may be, sports were considered a sin, the devil’s work, and blasphemy against God and Church. Then as the country developed and sports became something to both sell to people as entertainment, and socialize working class immigrants to see America as the greatest country on earth. But the 20th century saw numerous examples, public and private, where sports exploded in growth but also became a platform for spectacular dissent.

I wrote A People’s History of Sports in the United States to reclaim a sports history that is far more dynamic than we were ever led to believe. I wrote it because as Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, taught so many of us, we learn about history not only to understand the past, but lay claim to the future. And if we can reclaim sports, if we can crash down the palace gates of play, there’s no telling what we can go after next.

[Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

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."