Baseball's Hall of Very Good

I love baseball. It's a great sport that since its inception has brought us a stock pile of talented athletes, brilliant personalities, and controversy. Passed down from generation of fathers to their sons have been stories of great games and even greater players. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Bob Gibson, and so many others like Tommy Lasorda and Ken Griffey, Jr. have lifted America's pastime onto their shoulders and commended this great game from one generation to the next. But, when memory fails and eyewitnesses have passed on there is one place that anyone who loves this game can go to relive history, a place that houses all the names and stories, and that is Cooperstown, the baseball Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, with this year's inductee Jim Rice, the Hall of Fame is slowly becoming the Hall of the Very Good instead. Jim Rice played his entire career for the Boston Red Sox in one of the biggest baseball markets in the country. I am told that he was one of the game's most feared hitters during the 70's and early 80's. But, I am also told that when he appeared on the ballot for the first time he only received 29.8 percent of the vote. Now, in his 15^th and final year on the ballot, he is in. This is very curious to me.

Granted he was an eight-time All-Star and the 1978 AL MVP. He had a lot of the numbers that are standard measures for the Hall. It is even argued that it wasn't his on-field exploits but his off the field relationship with reporters that prevented him from being elected. I feel like it is something much more tangible.

I think it took so him so long to be inducted because the reporters and voters who wielded the power to let him through those doors new something more inherently truthful. The voters new as good of a player as he was, he wasn't great. He was very good, but not worthy of the Hall of Fame. Time had to wash that away for him to get in. Journalists had to fashion well written articles to build a ground swell of appreciation amongst fans for this man to get recognized. Years had to soften the perceptions of this player in order to sway the verdict.

Inherently, I have no issue with his induction. The Hall should be a place where names of hard working players are rewarded for their years of service to the game that they gave so much of themselves too. We just can't be surprised by the yearly debates over these interesting cases because we have allowed the bar to fall instead of rise. Just remember that the next time you are in Cooperstown and hear a boy asking his father to tell him about players like Jim Rice. The conversation may end something like this, "Well son, I don't really know much about him. I remember that he was very good, though." Unfortunately, a sobering epithet in a place where nothing less than, "Oh, if you could have only seen him play," falls well short of the mark.