You Had Me Then You Lost Me

Dr. Phil came so close…and then blew it in the end:

To be honest, there’s not much difference between the 537 votes that [Cal] Ripken received and the 532 for [Tony] Gwynn. But the five ballots that included votes for Baltimore’s Ironman and not votes for the San Diego Slasher make me wonder if some people don’t have to be hit over the head to appreciate talent…

Think about how many players have come along since Teddy Ballgame [i.e., Ted Williams], and Gwynn outhit every one of them. How could he not have been a unanimous choice? How could anyone, including Ripken, receive more votes? But compared with my outrage at the treatment of Andre Dawson, that’s a tiny mystery.

God help me.

First off, Dr. Phil is right – how can you rationalize not voting for Gwynn or Ripken? As Jim so eloquently put it, duh. These guys were no-brainers.

But consider that no one in the history of the Hall has been a unanimous choice. Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Willie Mays, Christy Matthewson, Tom Seaver, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, Mickey Mantle – none of that lot scored 100% of the vote.

So that tells us the BBWAA are experts on no-brainers, I guess…

But then Dr. Phil blows it by whining about Andre Dawson. Dawson was a good player, and a great guy, and I’m glad I got to see him in Cub uniform. But he wasn’t a great player.

Why the constant harping for Dawson? A clue comes in Dr. Phil’s lead paragraphs, which gives us a disturbing glimpse into the mind of our baseball puniditocracy:

There are a lot of distractions in a baseball press box. There’s the Internet, hot dogs, cell phones, nachos, fantasy football, popcorn, office politics, hamburgers, loud music on the stadium sound system, and pretty people kissing on the Jumbotron. Oh, yeah, French fries, too.

We’re only human up there.

How can we book tee times, argue with editors, study our stock portfolios, get someone younger to explain how to do a Sudoku, make pro bono appearances on talk radio, and watch the game?

Dr. Phil claims he can. But the real answer is no one can. And if Dr. Phil really could block out the distractions and free food and pay attention to the game, he’d understand that while Dawson was a very good player, he wasn’t good enough to be a Hall of Famer. No matter how good an interview he was.