1/03/2005 01:51:00 PM by Rob

East Coast Hall Of Fame Voting

I believe that sometime this week, tomorrow maybe, Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and others of their ilk will have the ringers on their cellies turned up x-tra loud so they don't miss the call from Cooperstown, informing them whether they've made the grade, or come up short again.

I really wish Sandberg hadn't had Barry Rozner write him a book which states that he would never, ever come back to baseball, then come back a year later. It would have been poetic if he could have just stayed retired. Some may point out that his 1994 year was worse than dismal, which scrubs the "going out on top" argument.

Yeah, but, he was the highest paid player in the game as he was walking away. He left over $20M on the table when he walked. THERE's your poetic falling upon the sword, there's your grace. In that case, he WAS going out on top. Unquestionably, Hall-Of-Famer.

But he fucked THAT up, and for a man who certainly deserves to be in there by now, here's to waiting another year.

Then again, there are a couple of other guys who even have more beef than Ryno. Goose Gossage was a he-man stud hoss, and when he came in to pitch against you, all hope was gone. When I watched him, I felt in every fiber of my being that I was watching Greatness. Hall-Of-Famer.

I think Tommy John, in his own way, has contibuted far more to the game than just his pitching stats. Here was a man who was done, D-U-N, and they invented a surgery, just for him, that allowed doctors to carefully pull the dinner fork out of his back, and send him back out there for a wonderful second-chance career. 100 years from now, people will still speak of Tommy John. Hall-Of-Famer.

Now we have the case of Andre Dawson, whose stats pale in comparison to the Anabolic Age, and the Astroturf stadiums of the 1980's brutally robbed him of a certain percentage of his abilities. Naturally, anyone who paid attention in 1987 saw him literally carry an entire team on his back, even MORE impressively than SamMe did in 1998 and 2001. But not all of his years were comparable, his performance in the 1989 playoffs was both disappointing and sad, and in the end, they practically had to drag him off of the field.

But, good Lord, nobody tried harder, fought harder, or gave more than the Hawk. It's gonna be a tough sell for him throughout the process, which isn't fair, much like his injury-ravaged career. I'd vote for him if given a chance.

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