Not to Take You Away from SoSG....

... But BR's article about CAL RIPKEN'S 2131st GAME is worth a read.

Lou Gehrig's record stood for a half-century, and it felt like it had been there forever. Cal Ripken Jr.'s record has stood for 20 years, and it feels like...wait, has it really been 20 years since that fabulous night when he passed Gehrig by playing in his 2,131st consecutive game? "It seems like yesterday in one way," Ripken said. "And then there's the realization that it's been 20 years."

Twenty years. It's a lifetime for the guy who might be the best shortstop in baseball today. Carlos Correa was born two weeks after the game that changed Ripken from a great player headed to the Hall of Fame into a legend with a nickname. When Ernie Johnson says "Iron Man" on those TBS baseball telecasts, we all know who he's talking about. We all remember. It's about that streak. It's about that night—that magical night that lives on in history. "There's never been another game like it," Rex Hudler said. "And there'll never be another game like it."

Hudler was the starting second baseman for the California Angels that night at Camden Yards. He went 0-for-2 with a strikeout, before Spike Owens pinch hit for him. "By far the greatest moment in my career," he said. "And it had nothing to do with me." It truly was a game like no other ever played. And this Sunday, September 6, 2015, will mark the 20-year anniversary.

Even before Sosa, McGwire and their kilos of 'roids, the real Iron Man resuscitated baseball from the '94 Strike. If there's a better streak in sports - with all due to respect to Unbreakable Orel H - I don't know about it.

The Baseball Hall of Fame 2007 Election and the Wisdom of Crowds

In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki (a New Yorker business columnist) posited the counter-intuitive theory that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." The premise was supported in cases of economics (market predictions), politics (voting for candidates), and even logistics (traffic patterns or walking on sidewalks). It’s the kind of premise that underpins sites like Yahoo! Answers (besides, of course, the underpinning of 11-year-old kids with too much time on their hands after school).

Surowiecki admits that the theory breaks down in a number of situations, namely when the crowd is too emotional, imitative, or centralized. Which is exactly why it was interesting to me that, this year, the ESPN fans, with their well-known hometown (and east-coast) biases and herd mentalities, were reasonably predictive in predicting the votes of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s votes for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Let’s look at the Top Eleven vote-getters in the Baseball Hall of Fame election, whose results were announced today:

Player	BBWA rank	BBWA %	ESPN fans' rank	ESPN %
Cal Ripken, Jr.	1	98%	1	76%
Tony Gwynn	2	98%	2	75%
Rich Gossage	3	71%	4	42%
Jim Rice	4	64%	6	39%
Andre Dawson	5	57%	3	50%
Bert Blyleven	6	48%	7	36%
Lee Smith	7	40%	5	40%
Jack Morris	8	37%	12	23%
Mark McGwire	9	24%	10	28%
Tommy John	10	23%	9	29%
Steve Garvey	11	21%	15	14%

Don Mattingly came in 15th in the BBWA voting with a scant 10% of the vote. The BBWW put Alan Trammell, Dave Concepcion, and Dave Parker ahead of Mattingly, the only other player in the ESPN fans’ top ten. With the exception of Mattingly, though, the fans nailed the rest of the top ten vote-getters, with minimal differences in rank order.

Just as the fans overvalued Mattingly, they undervalued Jack Morris and our namesake Steve Garvey, the latter of whom will have his fate decided by a Veterans Committee from here on out. Sorry, Steve.

Also, on the one “judgment call” on the ballot, the referendum on the steroid era proxied by Mark McGwire’s candidacy, the fans (28%) came pretty darn close to reflecting the writers (24%).

The ESPN fans had over 200,000 votes, relative to the BBWA’s 545 votes. Wisdom of crowds, indeed.

SI.com Has a Really Mean Art Department

I mean, were the arrows really necessary?

Congratulations to Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken

I am here to talk about the past...

Congratulations to Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, Jr. for their election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Well-deserved for both players, whose careers and post-baseball lives have been shining examples amidst a muddied steroid-tainted mess.

I was fortunate to see both players play, which was inspiring even at the end of their careers. During Camden Yards' inaugural season back in 1992, I remember going back on two separate occasions smack dab in the middle of The Streak. The love for Cal Ripken from the fans was impressive, even if the love for Billy Ripken (and Cal Sr.) was not quite at that level. And even as a young kid, I had a friend in junior high who was a big Orioles fan, and he would drag me and his father down to the Big A whenever the O's came to town.

For Gwynn, I recall sneaking down to the Murph a couple of times to see him bat. I think it was in his final season, when I went down to watch him play a home game along with Orel (from SoSG, not the real Orel). If I recall correctly, Gwynn didn't start but he did end up pinch-hitting late in that game (and got a hit). And if I recall correctly, Orel was in the bathroom and missed the whole thing. Oh, well.

Congrats to both, and thanks for the memories!

One Last Hall of Fame Hurrah for Steve Garvey

I know this may be heresy, but the name of our blog notwithstanding, I can't fully justify Steve Garvey getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame in this, the 15th and final year he is on the ballot. Besides the fait accompli that is Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken's coronations (announced tomorrow at 11am PST), I can see the argument for Jim Rice, and maybe Goose Gossage and Andre Dawson.

But I find it interesting that even Dodger beat writer Ken Gurnick of mlb.com can't even promote Garvey's candidacy with a straight face (not that you can tell whether he's smirking from his writing; but you get the idea):

"I don't see why Rice, Gossage or Dawson -- each having received more than 60 percent of the vote last year -- aren't already in. Gwynn and Ripken are easy picks. This will be my 15th and last vote for Garvey -- he'll come off the ballot next year -- but you don't make 10 All-Star Games without being one of the premier (and most famous) players of your generation."

Ten All-Star appearances is nothing to slouch at, true--the only non-Hall of Famer-caliber players with more All-Star appearances that I could find are Roberto Alomar (12), Barry Larkin (12), and Bill Freehan (11); everyone else is either an active player, pending admission or at least consideration, or banned due to gambling on the game. But All-Star Game selections are a by-product of fame, given the fan-voting element, and shouldn't be the strongest factor for Hall admission--or Kirk Gibson would be up there, as would Darryl Strawberry, and you could even make cases for Bob Uecker and Mookie Wilson.

In Bill James' book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, James illustrates how capricious the election process is (and I can imagine it is only worse with the dawn of the internet campaigning for Hall candidates), but he distills election away from the fundamentally flawed comparative argument (i.e., "if X is in the Hall of Fame, then Y needs to be there too"), and toward the simple position that Hall of Fame members should reflect players who were dominant at their position for a decade. (I do hope I got the takeaway correct here, as it's been a while since I've read this book.)

Garvey's playing time of 1969-1987 overlaps at the end with Keith Hernandez, a five-time All-Star, who overshadowed Garvey defensively. Both players have one NL MVP award (Garvey 1974; Hernandez 1979). And offensively, their career batting averages are close (though to be fair Garvey was much more productive in HRs and RBI). However, Garvey, as a Dodger, never even led his own team in OPS (which was led by Dusty Baker, Ron Cey, and Reggie Smith). Garvey was in the top 10 in batting average six seasons and top 10 in home runs for three seasons. In short, he was a hit machine and solid, but not exactly "dominant" in his era.

Where the Garv' does elevate among others' status, however, is exactly what Gurnick references--fame. I suppose this word is in the very name of the institution, so maybe that's an accurate criterion. But James also mentions in his book how fame, through playing with famous teammates in a big-city, was exactly what got Phil Rizzuto in the Hall as well, despite also being less than dominant. Scooter is a nice guy, sure. But so is Garvey--heck, he is (or at least, was) a role model! (And this is coming from one of his sons.)

I'm pretty borderline on this one but I think Garvey falls short once again, and maybe gets in later off the Veterans' Committee. I can't put Garvey in the same echelon as Ripken or Gwynn, or even maybe Rice (eight-time All-Star, also 1 MVP award and comparable BA, but far superior HR and RBI totals). But even if I can't fully support it, I guess I'll be rooting for Garvey tomorrow (sort of like the guy at the Eagles games who doesn't want to cheer too loudly for the opposing team for fear of getting batteries thrown at him).

And once Garvey gets there, he can bring Dusty, Reggie, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and the Penguin in with him.