The Other "Hawk"

It's time once again for the annual, "Get Pissed Off About the Baseball Hall Of Fame Voting Results" ceremony. Not too much to get mad about this year however. Bert Blyleven and his 60 career shutouts once again got the shaft, and Roberto Alomar apparently still is serving his penance for spitting in John Hirschbeck's face. Both will get in next year though. Other than that, the voters actually tried to be somewhat consistent with this years lone player enshrinee Andre Dawson. I'll explain momentarily...

Please understand, that if The Beard had his way, he would kick people out of the baseball hall of fame, that have already been enshrined. The Hall should be for the very minuscule elite players that played the game. Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Cy Young, Willie Mays, Walter Johnson, Ted Williams, Henry Aaron, Frank Robinson, Tris Speaker, Mickey Mantle, Warren Spahn, Greg Maddux, and not too many more after that. Everyone else can pretty much take a hike because they don't belong among those types of elite players. Since this is not realistically possible though, we'll deal with the reality of the situation as it currently stands.

The Beard has long felt that Jim Rice and Andre Dawson were not great players, but just really good for a long time, with flashes of greatness scattered in between. Andre Dawson however, was clearly a better player than Jim Rice both in terms of power (438 Homers for Dawson, 382 for Rice), Gold Gloves (8 for Dawson, 0 for Rice), and base stealing (Dawson stole 314, Rice stole 58). Couple that with Dawson winning his lone MVP award on a last place 1987 Cubs team. The most impressive part about Dawson is that he is one of three players ever to have over 400 home runs and 300 stolen bases. The other two, are two guys named Barry Bonds and Willie Mays.

So since they put Jim Rice in, logically they would have to put Dawson in, and they did the right thing today. So congrats to Andre Dawson. He is one of the very few Cubs The Beard always respected over the years, and it's good to see him get recognition for his achievements.