Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2013 Results: Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Biggio are elected to the Hall of Merit!
(bbtf)
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have been elected to the Hall of Merit!
The timing for our first year electing 4 candidates could not have worked out better, since class of 2013 is the strongest in terms of electees that we’ve ever had. The top of the 1934 ballot included Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Pop Lloyd, Smokey Joe Williams and Cristobal Torriente, but only 2 were elected.
Bonds and Clemens were each unanimous at 1 and 2. I believe that’s the first ...
Read More...
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
Page 1 of 2 pages
1 2 >With the Pirates (yes, he came up with the Pirates), he challenged Reggie Smith to a fight mid-game - and they had a fight beneath the stands with both teams watching. All this mid-game. The umps had to go find everyone to get the game back going on.
He famously drove around Atlanta three times because he kept missing the exit.
He initiated maybe the ugliest bean brawl of the last 50 years in a 1984 Padres-Braves game
From the last link:
I had never heard this story before. I have to imagine that all the other players acted like school kids and were yelling "Fight! Fight! Fight!" the entire time.
When I was a kid and Expo fan, I just loved him. He was entertaining. And he threw a "balle arc-en-ciel" (Rainbow ball?) [edit: just checked. It seems to be called an eepheus pitch.]
Here's the video.
Good times.
RIP Pascal.
The Perez brothers had fairly similar careers. All three were pretty good around age 26. Melido and Carlos last pitched in the major leagues when they were 29. Pascual had a horrible year at 28 and didn't pitch when he was 29. He did come back for five good years (though only two of them were full seasons) from 30-34.
That's really specific and rare - like an opinionated Primate. Dominican former-Expos include Vladimir Guerrero and Pedro Martinez.
Games he was pitching were never boring.
And RIP, Pascual. I hope you are at peace now.
Detectives think alcohol was involved.
RIP Pascual.
And they all look so skinny compared to modern players -- it's like watching the junior varsity teams go at it.
Calderon was Puerto Rican though. If it's just an Expo curse, it also applies to Gary Carter and Hideki Irabu.
The really weird thing about that brawl was every time they thought they had it broken up and the players settled down, some new melee would start. I also noted that when Summers ran towards the Atlanta dugout, as soon as he got close some fans started throwing things at him, too - and I did see in the video a couple of fans getting arrested as well. Craaazy times.
Except for John McSherry, who looks exactly like Chris Christie.
I didn't see it on that video, but I seem to remember Ed Whitson coming out of the Padres clubhouse at one point with no shirt on.
The other weird thing was that after the initial plunking (which sure as hell looked intentional), Perez and Lefferts appeared to be completely uninvolved in the brawl.
RIP Pascual. You were fun.
Padres had a lot of famous players that year (obviously partly they gained some fame because they won the NL). Dravecky, Garvey, Gossage, Wiggins, Templeton, McReynolds, Bochy, and Gwynn, all show up in that video. Braves were not so famous.
RIP Pascual.
Watch the video again -- Perez is actually backing out of the box to avoid the ball before Lefferts' release!
Also notable is that some of the rowdiest fans involved in the fracas aren't even wearing shoes! Were shoes not common in 1984? (I was barefoot a lot back then, but of course I was only 7...) And why do some of the skinny little high-schoolers playing baseball in that video have huge beards?!
They aren't famous now but I'd bet that at the time of the fight the Braves players were better known or at least as well known as the Padre players. The reach of TBS back then was tremendous. Back then most of the people I knew followed two teams closely; your local team and either the Braves or the Cubs depending on which "Superstation" your cable company provided (assuming you had cable).
I also liked how the announcer said, "it's good there's a fan down on the field, both teams will turn on the fan"
Wasn't it in '84 that Sparky Anderson methodically belittled Lance Parrish for having lifted weights all off-season and shown up to Spring Training with muscles?
If that happened today it would take him 17 hours.
Sad news about Pascual. The early-80s Braves squads pretty much made me a lifelong baseball fan, and Perez was a big part of those teams. Looking back, it was a crazy mix of characters. You had the straight-laced guys like Dale Murphy and Bruce Benedict...and on the other side, you had the not-so-sane players like Perez and Al Hrabosky. They were a lot of fun to watch, no doubt.
RIP, Pascual.
Also, the between-the-legs pickoff move was always entertaining.
This was the absolute best part of the brawl. Because of his injury, Horner had been in the press box doing guest color commentary. As tension was building, it was obvious that crap was about to go down. So, Horner quitely scooted out of the press box to prepare to join the mele. But it would have been unseemly for him to go on the field in street clothes, so he changed into his uniform first. Imagine the reaction at 1:15 of the video of the crowd watching on TBS when Summers goes charging toward the dugout after Perez, and Horner -- who we were just listening to five minutes earlier -- surprisingly pops out of the dugout in uniform to throw down. It's hard to overstate how riveting it was.
good future managers, bad future managers, multiple guys who died tragically in a few different ways (Moore, McSherry, Wiggins, Perez, was Show on that roster?).
It really played out like a fight on the school playground, the way it would start and stop up again in different parts of the playground, involving different parties.
Except for John McSherry, who looks exactly like Chris Christie.
I didn't see it on that video, but I seem to remember Ed Whitson coming out of the Padres clubhouse at one point with no shirt on.
Also notable is that some of the rowdiest fans involved in the fracas aren't even wearing shoes!
Skinny, shirtless ballplayers. Fat umpires. Shoeless fans.
Sometimes I miss the 80s so damn much...
That was the next year. Show did start game 1 of the NLCS that year though.
Page 1 of 2 pages
1 2 >You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.