Jim Rice to me is a great example of perception vs. reality and how people internalize their belief system at a certain age and stay with it regardless of facts. It’s kind of reminds me of how your father would still wear black socks with his sandles in the middle of summer during the 1980′s.

Rice wasn’t even considered a strong HOF candidate before all the sabermetric stuff like win shares, war, and warp came out. But those 3 measurements just point out how awful his HOF induction really is. In all three of those measurements Rice ranks about 250th in career value, around George Foster, Andy Van Slyke, and Daryl Strawberry.

My main problem with the writers is Why do they consider George Foster a laughable HOF candidate and then vote for Rice when they were basically the same player.

It’s not like Rice had this great long “peak” to go against his rather pedestrian career value. As far as his “peak” goes it lasted for about 3 season: 1977-1979.

Rice wasn’t even the best OF of the Red Sox teams, Evans and Lynn were better players. And Evans was much better and he should be the one going into the HOF.

I even checked on his career stats at baseball reference and it’s amazing for a guy that was a LF/DH who played his entire career at a great hitters park like Fenway, he only finished in the top 50 in 2 offensive categories!!: Sac Flies and Grounded into Double Plays. And when you consider that Sac Flies only became a accepted stat in 1954 and GIDP is a negative statistic which Rice finished 6th, it really makes you shake your head.

What is comes down to is some kind of B.S. notion that can’t be proven like being “feared”.

But what really bothers me is that guys like Grich,Whitaker, and Dwight Evans aren’t even on the ballot and guys like Santo, Raines, Allen, Trammell, Blyleven, Torre, Wynn, can’t get elected.

There are literally 100 better position players than Rice not in the HOF. And about 100 pitchers with more value than Rice not in the HOF

http://wezen-ball.blogspot.com/2008/12/through-years-jim-rice.html

Rice was all that, while Dwight Evans was seen as a .270 hitter with some power and a “good eye” and great arm. Now we can see that Evans was a textbook run creator (OBP + SLG) and run preventer, whereas reasoned analysis has dinged the Rice aura. The rational vs. emotional will always pervade these discussions. Props for handling the case of Rice in a way that honors both instincts.

As a long-time Tiger observer/fan, it would be nice to see Trammel in the Hall but, to me, I think a stronger case could be made for Lou Whitaker. He’s arguably the American League’s all-around dominant player of his position for his era. His numbers speak for themselves, but one of the advantages of seeing him as often as I did was being able to witness his more abstract skills; his ability to turn the double play, his even more amazing relays from short right field, his late-inning clutch hitting, his ability to protect the plate and drive the pitch count up fouling off pitch after pitch, his durability (can you imagine how many times he was slid into?), etc.

Not to make it an Alan vs Lou thing, but the fact that Trammel stays under consideration while Whitaker is on the back burner has more to do with politics,personality and media perception, IMO; maybe race, to some extent. Trammel was always a more gregarious guy, didn’t shy away from post-game interviews, was more accessible , hung out with Gibby, had some high profile moments (’84 Series), etc. Press folk could relate to him – Whitaker was quiet and stayed to himself. Even the Detroit media, while laudatory, was kind of condescending to Whitaker as if he was Gilligan to Trammel’s Skipper or something. It was late into Whitaker’s career, for example, before anyone even bothered to ask what he thought of the nickname ‘Sweet Lou’; he hated it. He said it “sounded like a pimp name”.

Geezus, sorry to ramble, this is my first post here, but Whitaker was possibly my favorite Tiger player of my lifetime and I consider myself lucky to have witnessed his skills on locally televised games as well as in person as often as I did. Every year that goes by with him further and further from consideration always makes me question the real value of the whole Hall of Fame concept. Not that it’s as weird and arbitrary as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but………..

because he didn’t smoke (more), he caught glaucoma and had to retire. w/o the injury, he would have had more years of productivity.

he belongs, even before he told the twins to “jump on my back, i’ll carry you.”

A little bummed that Blyleven, Trammel and Raines didn’t get more support.

18 : Interesting point about Rice’s good name actually suffering in a way by gaining induction and inviting eternal complaints about such induction.

Greenwell was good, but in the end he was no Troy O’Leary.