Dumbing Down, Part I

Maybe it’s because I’m advancing into the upper regions of middle age, but it sure seems that a number of very good ballplayers from the days of my youth—the ’60s and ‘70s in case you were wondering—have been ignored by baseball Hall-of-Fame voters for absolutely no good reason whatsoever.  Tommy John won 288 games and lent his name to a surgical procedure, but no entry; never mind, as voters have, that he lost 1-1/2 years to that surgery.  Jim Kaat amassed 283 wins over a 25-year career that began with the original Washington Senators, but no entry; never mind those two 20-win seasons he had with the White Sox as a 35- and 36-year old.  Yet this July, Jack Morris with 254 wins will be inducted into Cooperstown, and a number of voters want Mike Mussina (270 wins) to join him.  And let’s not forget all the support Curt Schilling, Mr. Personality, has garnered with his 216 wins wrapped around a bloody sock.   

There’s one more player truly deserving of the Hall: Rusty Staub, who died Thursday at the age of 73.  Staub had an extraordinary, 23-year career that, to me at least, deserves HOF enshrinement: 4,050 times reaching base (not counting errors), 41^st highest all-time; 292 homeruns; 1466 RBIs;  2716 hits; and a .362 career on-base percentage.  In a consideration of Staub’s career for the New Times, a writer cited all these stats to go with the comment, “Most of those career totals are, admittedly, below Hall of Fame standards.”  Really?  What baseball planet do you hale from, buddy?

Let me thrown in a few more details on Staub. He’s 19^th all-time with 100 career pinch hits.  In 1983, he had a stretch of eight straight pinch hits (which ties the major-league record) and 25 pinch-hit RBIs on the season.  He hit his first home run at the age of 19 and his last at the age of 41.  He hit .423 for the Mets in the 1973 World Series with 11 hits and 6 RBIs against the vaunted Oakland A’s.  Without Staub, it’s doubtful the Mets even get to the Series, let alone extend it to seven games

Sportswriters are forever pointing out the bad characters already in Cooperstown, starting with Ty Cobb, this as a rationale for opening the HOF to “juicers,” as my daughter likes to call steroid cheats.  And yet no one demands that “good guys” get into the Hall.  Staub would certainly qualify.  He went out of his way to learn to speak French when he played in Montreal, and his foundation raised millions of dollars for the families of  NYC police and fire personnel killed in the line of duty.

Rusty Staub not Hall of Fame material?  Give me a break.