Baseball Hall Makes Call

Becoming a Hall Of Famer means you were one of the very best to ever do your given profession. Baseball's no different. If you were selected into the Hall, it means your career was pretty good to say the least. Only one person was selected for the class of 2022 by the BWAA. Red Sox slugger David Ortiz got the call this year, being the lone inductee into the class, at least from the writers. He joins Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, Bud Fowler, Gil Hodges, Minnie Miñoso and Buck O’Neil, all of whom were voted in by the Golden Days and Early Baseball Era committees back in December.

Ortiz spent 20 years in the Majors. Started in 1997 with the Twins and played there till 2002. Then signed in Boston in 2003, where he played the rest of his career, before retiring in 2016. When Big Papi hung up his spikes, he played in2,408 games, collecting 2,472 hits, 541 home runs, driving in 1,768 runs. He was a ten time all star, winning seven silver sluggers and three world series titles with the Red Sox. He's one of only three men, along with Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson as the only men to hit over 500 home runs and win three World Series titles.

You needed a big hit, more so come playoff time, Ortiz was your guy. There were stretches where he was carrying the Red Sox offense. The guy could hit when the game was on the line too. His 17 home runs in the playoffs were 7th most in history and his 61 playoff RBI were 4th most all time.

Notable names that received votes but didn't get in are as follows:: Barry Bonds (66% Final year on Ballot) Roger Clemens (65%, final year on Ballot), Scott Rolen (63%), Curt Schilling (58.6%, Final year on Ballot), Todd Helton (52%), Billy Wagner (51%) Sammy Sosa (18% Final year on Ballot), Andrew Jones (41%) and Alex Rodrigues (35%).

Of course the debate will continue to rage on for a long time as to whether or not guys associated with the steroid era are ever going into the hall. Bonds and Clemens were at the top of the list and came close to getting in but alas. That will always and forever lead to the debate. Nothing was ever proven them actually taking of course and there's no proof of them actually cheating. It's like the writers are trying to erase a part of history.

This of course is going to be another debate by itself. But what the live ball era did at the end of the 90s and early 2000s was get fans back to the game. After the strike in 1994 that cancelled the World Series, the image of the game took a huge hit and a lot of fans seemed to turn their back on the game. Then the home run chase of 1998 started to get them back. And it was around that time the image of players started to change. I'm not saying players actually did anything, because there's no proof of that. But the eye tells the whole story.

Is the system messed up? Yes. Does it need to change? Yes