DHL Dan CLXXVI - Baseball Hall of Fame Musings

Shank's not too thrilled with the slate of recent inductees into Cooperstown:

Looking forward to voting for some slam-dunk Baseball Hall of Fame candidates in the coming years, and other thoughts

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Picked-up pieces while fondly remembering not-so-long-ago days when Red Sox and Patriots owners seemed to care more about winning than making money . . .

▪ Fred McGriff and Scott Rolen will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.

These are good dudes with impressive résumés, but theirs are not names that come to mind when fans talk about baseball immortality. Rolen is a career .281 hitter who had only one top-10 MVP season in a 17-year career and went hitless in the 2004 World Series against the Red Sox. He was voted in by the BBWAA in his sixth appearance on the ballot. McGriff was overlooked in 10 tries with the writers, never cracking 40 percent of the ballots (75 percent is required) before gaining admission via the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee.

McGriff and Rolen were very good players but not first-round slam dunks of recent vintage such as Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jim Thome, Chipper Jones, Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz.

It looks like the attitude was 'well, we have to induct somebody, so here they are.'

This part was amusing, at least for me:

...

▪ When New York Post sports reporter Howie Kussoy sat down to interview Mets outfielder Tommy Pham, the former Red Sox pulled out his cellphone and recorded the interview right along with Kussoy. I’ve had this happen only once. When I interviewed Larry Lucchino and Tom Werner for a book I wrote with Terry Francona, the Sox officials brought Dr. Charles Steinberg so they’d have their own recording of the session. Dueling recordings. It felt like the Nixon White House.

I talked to Shank a few years ago over the phone. The first thing he asked me was whether I was recording the conversation. I told him I was not, but I'm going to take a few notes if he didn't mind, and he didn't. Someone's got the Nixon thing down pat, all right.