Of Bagwell, Mize and McCovey

A subsidiary storyline from this year's Hall of Fame balloting was which player who fell short might have been best positioned by the vote for election in 2016, when the ballot will include for the first time Ken Griffey, Jr. The answer is ... Mike Piazza. But why not Jeff Bagwell--arguably the best first baseman in National League history until Albert Pujols came along, although Willie McCovey and even Johnny Mize might beg to differ?

Of Bagwell, Mize and McCovey

Finishing fifth in the voting this year, Mike Piazza saw a significant boost of support for his candidacy by being named on 69.9 percent of the ballots cast, up from 62.2 percent last year. This makes him the presumed front-runner of the returning eligibles next year. (see the following New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/sports/baseball/mike-piazzas-turn-could-be-next-for-hall-of-fame-election.html?ref=baseball.) Tim Raines, who came in seventh in this year's vote, made the biggest gain, seeing his name appear on 55 percent of the ballots compared to only 46 percent last year.

Nestled between Piazza and Raines was Jeff Bagwell, whose total barely budged, but was at least in an upward direction, from 54.3 percent to 55.7 percent of the voters' ballots. Bagwell, however, had received as much as 60 percent of the vote in 2013--his third year of eligibility--when the writers did not elect anybody to the Hall.

Jeff Bagwell was indisputably one of the game's best players in his prime during the 1990s. While Frank Thomas, Cooperstown class of 2014, was the best first baseman in the American League in the 1990s, Bagwell had that distinction in the National League. Bagwell's peak years of performance based on the WAR metric are a strong argument to put him in the discussion with Willie McCovey and Johnny Mize as the premier National League first baseman of the twentieth century. Albert Pujols, of course, clearly established himself in the first decade of this century as the greatest first baseman in the entire history of the senior circuit, and Pujols is in the conversation with Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx as the best at the position in all of baseball history.

From 1993, his third year in the majors, to 2001, Bagwell averaged 6.5 wins above replacement and was better than 5 WAR--which represents an All-Star level quality of play--each of those nine years except for 1995, when he just missed with a 4.8 WAR. There were, however, extenuating circumstances in 1995: like everyone else in major league baseball, Bagwell's season was shortened by 18 games at the front end because of the 1994-95 players' strike/owners' lockout, but Bagwell also missed the entire month of August with a broken hand after being hit by a pitch.

Bagwell retired with a .297 batting average, got on base in nearly 41 percent of his plate appearances and hit 449 home runs over his fifteen-year big league career, but in the nine years between 1993 and 2001 he hit 316 of his home runs, had six consecutive 100-RBI seasons (which would have been eight, if not for his injury in 1995, when he finished with 87 RBIs) and batted .308.

Johnny Mize also had nine years of peak performance with almost exactly the same player value as Bagwell (an average annual WAR of 6.7 for The Big Cat) from 1937 to 1948, three years of which he was wearing the uniform of Uncle Sam during World War II instead of that of the New York Giants, to whom the big first baseman was traded from the Cardinals after the 1941 season. One of the most prolific power hitters of his generation, Mize hit 278 home runs between 1937 and 1948, leading his league four times. His career total was 359 in a fifteen-year career, the last three of which were primarily as a part-time first baseman and exceptional pinch hitter with the Yankees.

Mize had six straight 100 RBI seasons from 1937 to 1942 and two more in 1947 and 1948. Were it not for missing the last two months of the 1946 season, stuck on 70 runs batted in, because his hand got in the way of a pitch and was broken, it would have been nine straight years of 100 RBIs. Unlike Bagwell's broken hand in 1995, Mize suffered his in the annual New York Mayor's Trophy exhibition game between the Yankees and Giants.

And then there is Willie McCovey, perhaps the most potent power hitter of his generation when taking into account the negative Candlestick factor. McCovey hit 521 career home runs, 469 of them in nineteen years with the Giants, all but 13 of those after the San Francisco team moved into wind-swept Candlestick Park in 1960. The Candlestick winds limited McCovey to 236 home runs in the park where he played 42 percent of his games. The man known as Stretch reached the 500-home run plateau, once a very big deal, not only playing most of the primetime years of his career in the 1960s, when pitchers were dominant, but getting many fewer plate appearances than he should have in the first six years of his career despite having burst on the scene with 13 home runs and a .354 batting average to win Rookie of the Year honors in 1959. It being he was not called up till the end of July, McCovey did all of that in only 52 games and just 192 at bats.

McCovey's career was stalled for three years because Orlando Cepeda had primacy at first base. Then, after a breakout season playing left field in 1963 when he led the league in home runs for the first time with 44, McCovey was hobbled by a foot injury throughout 1964, limiting his ability to generate power, and he hit only 18 home runs. His manager, Alvin Dark, was less than sympathetic and not convinced McCovey's dramatic falloff in production was attributable to an injured foot. This, of course, was the year Dark stirred controversy by questioning the work ethic of the Giants' African American and Latin players. (See my November 19 article, "Alvin Dark and the Persistence of Racial Stereotypes"   http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/11/alvin-dark-and-persistence-of-racial.html.)

Cepeda's season-long absence in 1965 made McCovey the Giants' new first baseman, which proved to be his big Hall of Fame-career-making break. McCovey's best years were from 1965 to 1970, during which he hit 226 home runs--(43 percent of his career total); had at least 30 go out of the park each of those six years; led the National League in both home runs and RBIs in 1968 (with 36 and 105 in the infamous Year of the Pitcher) and 1969 (with 45 and 126); and had an average annual player value of  6.4 wins above replacement.

But back to Jeff Bagwell.

Like Piazza, Bagwell has endured suspicions of steroid use that have not been proven. There is no actual evidence that either player used performance enhancing drugs. While it is clear by now that being linked to steroids by testing, personally admitting to their use, or being named in the Mitchell Report or in federal investigations into illegal performance-enhancing drugs have sunk the Hall of Fame candidacies of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and damaged at least the near-term prospects for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, Piazza and Bagwell are likely to be the test case for whether players about whom there are suspicions but no proof will be elected by the cohort of Baseball Writers Association of America members who vote for the Hall of Fame. Should either, and especially both, Piazza and Bagwell clear that bar in the next few years, the writers may eventually soften their objections to at least Bonds and Clemens as they approach the end of their ten-year ballot eligibility in 2022.

Distinction With a Difference in the Bonds, Clemens and Rose Hall of Fame Conundrum

With the Hall of Fame class of 2014 complete, their induction this summer will bring the number enshrined in Cooperstown to 306.  That number would be at least 310 had Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens not tarnished their great diamond accomplishments by their close association with steroids, and Pete Rose not violated the foremost Thou Shalt Not in major league baseball by betting on baseball games.  Rose alone among them, however, was barred from even being considered for Hall of Fame honors by Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) members eligible to cast ballots. This Insight suggests there is a meaningful distinction between the use of performance enhancing drugs--a betrayal of sportsmanship that undermines the integrity of both achievement and statistical records--and betting on baseball as Rose did (and as a manager, no less), which is a betrayal of our trust in the integrity of the game itself.

Distinction With a Difference in the Bonds, Clemens and Rose Hall of Fame Conundrum

Kostya Kennedy, whose book, Pete Rose: An American Dilemma, is due out in March, published an op ed article in the January 6 edition of The New York Times, "Give Rose a Shot at the Hall of Fame," http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/opinion/give-rose-a-shot-at-the-hall.html?ref=todayspaper, advocating that Rose "deserves his day of judgment" in BBWAA Hall of Fame voting.  Just as the balloting has concluded (so far, at least) that the performance enhancing drug (PED) allegations surrounding superstar players Clemens, Bonds and McGwire override their exceptional performances on the field of play, Kennedy argues it should be BBWAA electors--not major league baseball's permanently banished list--that determine whether Rose's betting on baseball games should preclude his residency in Cooperstown.  While sympathetic to this viewpoint, and even though Rose's prospects seem likely to be no greater than those who sold their soul to the PED devil for baseball immortality, I would argue there is a significant distinction that should not be lost between the sins of steroid users against the game and those of Pete Rose.

Much has been said about how the integrity of the game has been compromised by performance enhancing drugs like steroids and human growth hormone, particularly the credibility of sanctified baseball records broken by players presumed to have used such drugs.  The wonderful thing about baseball history, however, is that for those who care about it (and there are legions of us), there is an understanding of context in time and place which precludes the need to expunge their accomplishments as if they never happened or even the need to attach asterisks (although I would not be averse to this option).  The 1990s and the first half-decade of the twenty-first century will forever be known as the “steroids era” in baseball history, and the outsized accomplishments of that era (included sustained great performances by players well past their primes) will be evaluated in that historical context.

Because we can never know definitively who was taking what when, there are undoubtedly some players on whom suspicion will undeservedly be cast.  But the suspicions cast on McGwire, Bonds, Clemens and Alex Rodriguez, for that matter, seem deserved.  Their feats after they allegedly began using PEDs are legitimately open to question, to the point where their reputations are in tatters. But the irony is that Bonds and Clemens did so in search of greater immortality than they had already legitimately earned, forgetting there is no such thing as "greater" immortality. Immortality is immortality, and they were both there--the Hall of Fame waiting for them at the end of their careers.  For McGwire (if his Juiced teammate Jose Canseco's account is to be believed) and A-Rod, on the other hand, their entire careers are under a cloud.

Unfortunately, in the intensely competitive world of professional sports (baseball certainly included), sportsmanship--loosely identified with the trite saying, "it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game that counts"--is often cast aside by players, managers, and teams writ large seeking an edge, any advantage they can get away with. Whether we’re talking about tricks played by the 1890s Baltimore Orioles of John McGraw, Hughie Jennings, and Wilbert Robinson (like hiding baseballs in the outfield grass or holding up base runners by grabbing their belt buckles), scuffing baseballs and throwing illegal pitches, using corked bats, stealing another team’s signals (especially from outside the confines of the playing field), or any number of other nefarious schemes, the ethic of sportsmanship has always been compromised on the diamond.

Using steroids and taking human growth hormone (or whatever the next designed performance-enhancer will be) does indeed do more than those other things to undermine the credibility and integrity of accomplishments, but does not necessarily undermine the integrity of the game itself.  It is players seeking an unfair and illegal advantage, to be sure, but the games played on the field still unfold according to rules, the strategies employed, and players’ execution.  A betrayal of sportsmanship does not compromise the basic integrity of the games as played.

A betrayal of trust--which is what betting on baseball certainly is--on the other hand, does compromise the integrity of the game, because the manager or players involved can deliberately effect the outcome based on the decisions and actions they take or fail to make.  We trust that the games are not fixed.  That is why Pete Rose’s sin of betting on baseball is irredeemable and why his lifetime ban is absolutely correct, even though there is no reason to believe he ever bet on baseball during his indisputably Hall of Fame-caliber playing career.  It does not matter that he never bet against his own team.  The edict against betting on baseball has been fiercely uncompromising since the 1919 Black Sox scandal.  It has to be, because the integrity of the game depends on it.

While in no way intending to diminish the gravity of what they did, all of the others who were banished for life from organized baseball prior to Rose--including Shoeless Joe Jackson, who has had many advocate on his behalf for Hall of Fame consideration--were players who conspired to fix games on behalf of gamblers.  Not managers.  Pete Rose was the first manager to be banned.  Whether player or manager, the damage to the integrity of the game is irreparable—betting on baseball is a betrayal of our trust in the game—but what Rose did was particularly insidious precisely because he was the manager.

Players' performances certainly determine the outcome of games, but a manager controls the game.  He is the "decider," to borrow a phrase once used by an even more important decision-maker than a baseball manager. Every decision a manager makes, and there are countless decisions in every game, can affect the outcome.  Never mind that Rose said that he never bet against his own team, implicitly reassuring us that he was managing every game to win.  Why should we not believe him?  Rose was such a competitor that it is impossible to fathom that he would ever manage to lose.  But how could we ever be sure that his betting on baseball did not affect his judgment as a manager, once a man—and manager—to whom is entrusted the integrity of the game betrays that trust?  Obviously Rose’s gambling was an addiction (he bet on all sports), and obviously his gambling debts were a grave concern to him; he needed them to go away, to reconcile with his bookies.  That’s a lot at stake, and a lot to have on his mind.  Once Pete Rose decided to go down the path of betting on baseball, and especially betting on his own team, his integrity as a manager was hopelessly compromised and one can never be sure what impact that had on the games he managed.