Alan Trammell Should be in the Hall of Fame

Now a days I strongly believe that the Hall of Fame is not about the stats on the field, it's about if you upset anyone, wasn't friendly to the media or which media member's ego you stroked the most. With that being said I also believe that a Hall of Famer needs to present himself in a professional manner off the diamond. Alan Trammell, was a great player on the field and he was nothing but professional off of the field. He wasn't flashy, he didn't get into trouble, and he was not a player that the media could get a witty quote from. Trammell was just a player that did his job every day and carried the English D with pride.

Here is a short list of shortstops that were elected in to the Hall of Fame and their stats compared to Alan Trammell (his rankings in () among this list):

 

	Ave	OBP	SLG	Hits	HR	RBI	Runs	SB
Ozzie Smith	.262	.337	.328	2,460	28	793	1,257	580
Barry Larkin	.295	.371	.344	2,340	198	960	1,329	379
Phil Rizzuto	.273	.351	.355	1,588	38	563	877	149
Pee Wee Reese	.269	.366	.377	2,170	126	885	1,388	232
Alan Trammell	.285	.352	.415	2,365	185	1,003	1,231	236
	(2nd)	(3rd)	(2nd)	(2nd)	(2nd)	(1st)	(4th)	(3rd)

Stats came from Baseball Almanac and Baseball-Reference.com

One may think, well that is all fine and good, but there is also fielding. OK, in fielding within this same list, Alan Trammell’s fielding percentage is .977 and he is only behind Ozzie Smith which has a .978 fielding percentage.  He also, only ranks behind Ozzie Smith with Gold Gloves as well, Smith won 13 Gold Gloves while Trammell won 4 (Larkin has 3 and the Gold Glove was not awarded during Rizzuto and Reese’s era).

After all of the my preaching and all of the stats I threw out at you the bottom line is this, the voters of the Hall of Fame need to step back and remember what puts a player in the Hall of Fame.  It’s the professionalism the player showed, career stats and how he treated the game.  It’s not how high one can do a back flip or how charming one can be to the media.  If the voters can clear their minds of that then Alan Trammell will be a Hall of Famer.

Performance-enhancing drugs: Record Books not the only thing that was cheated!

Since the flood gates open regarding performance-enhancing drugs in MLB most of the topics that are discussed in the sports media are:

  1) Are the record books tainted?
  2) Does the drugs really help the players?
  3) Should the players in that era be inducted into the Hall of Fame?
  4) Would you do if it was worth millions of dollars in salary?

Well, these are nice topics, but I have never heard the one topic that I am most angry about when I think about the performance-enhancing drugs era and the influence it had in MLB:  MLB fans got cheated out of a great era of baseball. Think of some of the greats in the steroid/HGH era:

1.      Mark McGwire (Broke the single season record for home runs – 70 (1998), 583 home runs which ranks 9th all-time)

2.      Roger Clemens (354 wins 8th all-time with a 3.14 ERA and 4,672 strikeouts, the third-most all time over a 24 year career)

3.      Barry Bonds (762 home runs all-time home run leader)

4.      Rafael Palmeiro (569 Home Runs, ranked 12th all-time)

5.      Alex Rodriguez (643 Home Runs ranked 5th all-time)

All of the players I listed above would have been Hall of Famers without the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but with the accusation, Mitchell Report or the admission of using, their greatness has and will always be tarnish just like the fan's view of them. We as fans in this era was robbed of telling our kids and our grandchildren the stories that our fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles told us about watching Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer, Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby, etc. and how great it was growing up in the era in baseball. When we bring up Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens years down the road, the debate will not be was he the best player in that era, it will always be would he have been that great without it.

My baseball generation will be known as the Hall of Famers that could have been, because the greats in my time will never make the Hall of Fame.