Guns

I was looking at the list of players nominated for the Hall of Fame who did not get the required 27 votes (5%) necessary to get on the ballot again next year. This is usually a group of pretty good players who you would NEVER think of as hall of fame material.

Of course, there are always a few names that are intriguing.

This year the most intriguing name was Mark Grace. He was a pretty good ballplayer for a pretty long time. His lifetime batting average was .303. He was a 3 time all-star and a 4 time gold glover. He got a ring in 2001 with the Dbacks.

And he had that outrageous series in the 1989 NLCS against the Giants. He was 11 for 17, with 3 doubles, a triple, a homer and 8 RBIs. His slugging percentage was 1.118. He went mano-a-mano with Will Clark, who was 13 for 20, with 3 doubles, 1 triple, 2 homers and 8 RBIs, slugging 1.200. It was a truly memorable series, climaxed by Clark’s hit up the middle off Mitch Williams. Clark, too, did not receive enough votes in his first pass a few years ago, and is off the HOF ballot forever.

Grace and Clark’s good buddy Matt Williams only got 7 votes, and is also off the ballot forever. Matt finally learned to deal with the curveball, and ended up with 378 homers and over 1200 RBIs. He made 5 all-star teams and and won 4 gold gloves, and did the world’s greatest imitation of Babe Ruth.

David Cone didn’t make it either. I’m surprised to see that he didn’t win 200 games, no less 300. He had a nice ERA, and struck out over 2600, but he never quite fulfilled the promise of that phenomenal 1988 season, his first full season in the majors, when he went 20-3 for the Mets with a 2.22 ERA. Believe it or not, he finished 3rd in the Cy Young voting that season behind Orel Hershiser and Danny Jackson. Cone was a money pitcher – he was 15-3 in post-season games.

Of course, it’s really nice to see Mo Vaughn on any list except a list of obituaries. Apparently he retired from the Cal’s girls softball team.

But here is my favorite name, a guy The Doc and I picked on our first joint fantasy baseball team on Compuserve in 1988: Ron Gant. Gant turned out to be a pretty damned good player, finishing his career with 321 homers and 243 steals. He went 30-30 twice, and almost a third time (27-36).

But most of all, Gant had guns. Check him out!

The top 10 BR comparisons to Gant were all pretty good players with one probable HOFer:

Reggie Sanders
Jeromy Burnitz
Jimmy Winn
Andruw Jones
Bobby Bonds
Roy Sievers (led the AL in HRs & RBIs in 1957)
Greg Vaughn
Darryl Strawberry
Bobby Thompson
Frank Thomas (521 Homers, 1700+ RBIs)

You wonder if Andruw will finish ahead of Gant or behind him. He could go either way at this point.

Anyway, here’s to Ron Gant, who always has a seat of honor in the Pickled Pecklers’ clubhouse. And if you’re interested in acquiring his rookie cards, we’ve got about 5,000 of them you could purchase cheap.