Per Sandberg: Self-Appointed Chairman of the Committee on HOF Justice. #norynonoryno

MLB.com: During your Hall of Fame acceptance speech in 2005, you spoke a lot about playing the game the right way. What was your take on the most recent voting?

Sandberg: Well, first of all, the voting is in the hands of the sportswriters who follow the game, and I think that the writers once again sent a strong message to baseball that illegal drugs and all that is not and should not be a part of baseball. I ...

Plus he’d wait on line for an Ebinger’s black-out cake just like the rest of us!

Is former Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers great Gil Hodges the best eligible position player not in the Hall of Fame? No, Barry Bonds is…or maybe Jeff Bagwell. But five years ago, the answer very well may have been “yes”.

Without all this newfangled steroid nonsense clouding the picture, Hodges’ case depicts perhaps the most lopsided argument in history regarding a player’s Hall of Fame merit. It seems ...

“Garvey was a huge run producer nevertheless.” Fixed/Neutered.

In the seven-year stretch from his MVP season of 1974 through 1980, it could be argued that there wasn’t a better hitter in baseball than Garvey. No one had more hits during that period… not Rose, not Rod Carew, and not George Brett. Only Philadelphia Phillies Hall of Fame slugger Mike Schmidt had more RBIs (732 to 730), and as far as first basemen are concerned, only Carew (another Hall of Famer) comes close to Garvey’s ...

This is taking Vaseline’s® new Spray & Go® a bit too far!

Consequences for cheating? If you do well enough, you make the Hall of Fame. MLB won’t do anything about it. The Steroid Era may get the headlines, and it may fuel the debate today, but the seeds were planted when baseball let Gaylord Perry get away with throwing the spitball.

What is more damning is that Perry’s 1974 autobiography provided enough evidence for him to at least be suspended. Imagine if then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn ...

And we have a winner!

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the United States Mint announced today the names of the judges who will help choose the image for the obverse (heads side) of the 2014 National Baseball Hall of Fame Commemorative Coin. The judges are all Hall of Famers and represent more than half of the nine positions on the diamond: Joe Morgan (second baseman, elected 1990); Brooks Robinson (third baseman, elected 1983); Ozzie Smith (shortstop, elected 2002); Don ...

Home was not home
Your room was home
A corner was home
The place they weren’t, that was home

We now know you

Jim Rice
When Jim Rice hit the Hall of Fame ballot after his 16-year career with the Red Sox, the debates got ugly. Rice was feared, argued his supporters; Rice was overrated, a beneficiary of Fenway Park, argued his detractors. During most of Rice’s career in Boston, Fenway was a terrific hitter’s park, the traditional Fenway of “no lead is safe” lore. Overall, Rice hit .320 with ...

On Friday night against the Pirates, Braves right-hander Tim Hudson will make his first attempt at earning career win number 200. While I have no use for pitcher wins and losses as a measure of value, this is still a relevant career benchmark. It also raises the question of whether Hudson is cobbling together a case for the Hall of Fame.

In addition to being on the brink of 200 victories, the 37-year-old right-hander also boasts a .657 career winning percentage (21st all-time), a 126 ERA+ ...

Bill with some Roy Halladay, Todd Helton HOF speak and this…

Why do analysts uses replacement level player as a point of comparison, as opposed to for instance major league average?

Well, it’s not that we use one and don’t use the other.  We figure both (comparison to average and comparison to replacement player); we publish both, we use both.  But that’s a quibble, in that you’re certainly correct that the replacement player comps get 90% of the attention.

The “average” is a nothing ...

Not what Gossage was counting on.

Hall of Fame third basemen George Brett and Mike Schmidt are both undecided if they’ll attend this summer’s induction ceremonies at Cooperstown.

No one was elected to the Hall of Fame this year. For only the second time in four decades, baseball writers didn’t give any player the 75 percent required for induction. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa were among the Steriod Era stars shut out .

Houston Astros second baseman Craig Biggio, 20th on ...

How dare you challenge Rick Aguilera and his 3 (0.6%) HOF votes!

It seems like a team of The Best Players Currently Excluded from the Hall would crush a team of the Worst Included Players. C – Piazza, 1B – Bagwell, 2B – Biggio, SS – Trammell, 3B – Darrell Evans, OF – Barry Bonds, Raines and Dwight Evans, SP – Clemens, Schilling, Tiant, Saberhagen, Kevin Brown, RP – Lee Smith, Reardon, Myers, Franco, Aguilera with a bench of Ted Simmons, McGwire, Whitaker, Concepcion, Torre, ...

If Dizzy Dean is in, then…

Thus far, Santana has thrown only 2,025 2/3 innings over the course of his 12-year major league career (2000-2010, 2012) with the Twins and Mets, with the first three of those years totaling only 238 innings. Only in seven of those seasons did he throw enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. That’s an extremely small workload for a Hall of Fame pitcher; only three of the five enshrined relievers (Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers and Rich Gossage) and one starter ...

And he doesn’t even have 399...uhh 400 HR’s yet!

A Hall of Famer called him a Hall of Famer, the highest baseball compliment of all.

Such was the welcome that awaited Miguel Cabrera on Friday before his first workout of spring training.

“Even if he never played again, he’s a Hall of Fame player already,” Al Kaline said of the Tigers Triple Crown winner. “To see what he accomplished last year was unbelievable.”

You can debate, if you wish, whether Cabrera has Hall of Fame credentials so ...

Plus I just found out that Paul Oberjuerge no longer has a HOF vote…I guess covering amateur soccer in Abu Dhabi will do that.

The following HOF voters have been identified from the BBWAA.org’s own website as having case a ballot in the recent HOF election as “honorary” members. I’ve included some information as to what they are doing now, how they got their BBWAA ballot, and some side comments on published interviews, biographies, and the like relating to them (all my comments are ...

Buck? Mike? They were one nut away from an R.E.M. reunion.

With the heated discussion of performance enchaining drugs (PEDs), Kruk, an ESPN baseball analyst, commented.

“From an analyst side I don’t like it,” he said. “From a realistic side, there are a bunch of guys who think they need it to compete.”

Alex Rodriguez again is in the news for PEDs. He has admitted using them in the past.

“When you have been great and your stats start slipping, sometimes you change it up,” Kruk said. “Some ...

Thing is, I saw Jack Morris pitch, and he was great. Great enough for the Hall of Fame? All I know is there are less great players in there.

It’s one reason I don’t use my Hall of Fame ballot. Statistics, even the more contrived ones, have value. Greatness, though, is a naked-eye assessment. If they’re going to argue that Morris or even Curt Schilling are less significant than guys already in there, guys like Bert Blyleven, then they ought to call the place the Baseball Bureau of Statistics. ...

And to honor this historic Jack Morris event…Sportsnet 590 will now be called Sportsnet 3.90!

Welcome back, Jack.  A familiar face is returning to Toronto as former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Jack Morris returns to the city where he won two World Series titles as Sportsnet’s newest Blue Jays analyst. Morris will provide analysis for Sportsnet 590 The FAN’s Blue Jays radio broadcasts, and will also make appearances on Sportsnet’s Blue Jays game telecasts, Blue Jays Central, Baseball ...

I don’t know how often I can discuss one incident ~STEROIDS OMG!!!~ in my entire life, but I’ll continue to do that.

When it comes to the topic of not allowing certain major league baseball players into Cooperstown, the Goose is happy to let loose.

“We’ve got a bunch of cheaters that are up for the Hall of Fame,’’ offered Rich ‘Goose’ Gossage, who was himself inducted into the hallowed hall in 2008. “Absolutely not. I’ve taken a stand on that. I’ve said the pressures of ...

Dig in!

Carlos Scheidegger and Kenny Shirley, along with Chris Volinsky, visualized Major League Baseball Hall of Fame voting, from the first class in 1936 (which included Babe Ruth) up to present.

  All a fan can do is accept that Baseball Hall of Fame voting, conducted by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), is a phenomenon unto itself. If we can’t understand baseball Hall of Fame voting, though, maybe the next best thing is visualizing the data behind it. The set of ...

Does pre-booing Fenway two-arm bow for Smith.

“It’s been baffling the probably the last eight years,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of guys in the Hall of Fame who I had more votes than originally like Andre (Dawson), Bert Blyleven, guys like that and Bruce Sutter. Now I don’t really understand the voting. I’m not upset at the guys because it’s a tough thing to do.”

He was more puzzled than ever this year when no players from a star-studded ballot were elected. He doesn’t think steroid users ...

Damn Secret Society He-Man-Haters Club!

All that said, three reasons he’ll have trouble getting in on the first ballot:

1. He only spent five seasons as a full-time first baseman. He did play a higher percentage of his games in the field than Edgar Martinez—42 percent to 28 percent—but the DH factor could work against him.

2. The Edgar Martinez factor. How much better than Martinez was Thomas? Thomas does lead slightly in career Baseball-Reference WAR, 69.7 to 64.4, and certainly has big ...

Says the man who saw his HR total jump by 17 in 1993…

Retired Chicago White Sox slugger Frank Thomas feels even better about his career after watching steroids-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens fail to gain entry to the Hall of Fame.

“I think I’ve done enough to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer,” he said Saturday at the team’s fan convention.

“Watching all the nonsense unfold and not really knowing what was going on, it makes me much more proud of my career,” he said. “I ...

Brock Hanke spotted this article shows a link between Stan Musial and the Griffeys.

The Donora (PA) High School baseball team, from the 1939 high school annual, Dragon ‘39. Stan Musial (top row, fourth from left) was a junior on this team, and his younger brother, Edward (fourth from right, top row) was on the team too. Also on the team was Joseph “Buddy” Griffey (second from left, bottom row), father of Ken Griffey Sr. and grandfather of Ken Griffey Jr.

First Larry Rocca HOF ballot I’ve ever come across…but he gets an R for riginality.

LR: “I voted for Dale Murphy, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell. “

NatsGM: “Obviously there is an absence on your ballot of those who played in the ‘Steroid Era’… Rather than ask about these players and their candidacy, I am curious what you think becomes of these 10-20 star players 15 years from now?”

LR: “At least for now, I am not voting for anyone who played the bulk of his career in the ...

I remember when The Record used to feature hard-hitting articles like 6-month-old wolf pups escaping Jungle Habitat...now they’re down to interviewing basement bloggers.

Hall of Fame baseball writer Murray Chass is an authority on America’s Pastime and a voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame that produced no new members as the steroid controversy has raged on.

For more than 45 years, Chass covered the sport for the Associated Press and New York Times, chronicling baseball greats across the ...

Pennock Fever—Catch It!............oops, too late.

3. How did the outliers get in?

As I see it there are three clear outliers in the BBWAA voting. They are:

—Dizzy Dean was a great pitcher for 6 1/2 years—and that’s essentially his entire career. But, of course, he was also a legendary figure, a character, a man who helped define baseball for a generation. It took nine Hall of Fame ballots but he eventually got in.

—Don Sutton won 300 games. That’s why he’s in the Hall of Fame. His career ...