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Part I: 1871-1890 I think we’ve established that trying to pick favorites from the 19th century solely through statistics is a bit of a fool’s quest. The leagues weren’t truly organized yet; heck, the American League didn’t exist until 1901 and didn’t adopt the foul-strike rule until 1903. The minor league system as we know it today, . . . → Read More: O-fers Hall of Favorites When I was in elementary school, it might have been the fifth grade, a couple friends and I were out in the baseball field, basically killing time until the end of recess. We didn’t have a kickball or baseball gear, and the swingset had become boring. Your basic 10-year-old ennui had set in. I found an old shoe in the grass and tossed it to one of the guys. He tossed it back. The third friend — I would tell you who they were if I remembered — tried to intercept the pass. Shoe Ball was born. For a few weeks, we had found something to break us out of our doldrums. Before long, we had official rules. We didn’t really know the rules of football, so we created something that was similar to what we had seen on TV and yet … different. Plus we had a shoe instead of a ball. I am not kidding about this. Other kids joined in. I guess the swings just weren’t doing it for a lot of students at the time. No, I haven’t forgotten about the O-fers Hall of Fame project. In fact, precisely by looking into that is how I’ve gotten off the road, so to speak. I’ve been working on a way to fairly evaluate players, which has led me to some dark places with lots of numbers floating in the air. I worked it . . . → Read More: Shedding (Moon)light Congratuations to Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice on their selection to the National Baseball Hall of Fame! If you could build your own Hall of Fame, from scratch, who would be in it? How would you go about choosing the very best baseball players of all-time? I’ve thought about those questions from time to time as kind of a fun game, but I didn’t take it very far. It was just an interesting diversion, especially about 20 years ago when I wasn’t as jaded, to look at the backs of baseball cards and try to figure out where players like Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven ranked among the legends. Now that we’re getting some minor bits of traffic here, I’ve decided to have a little bit of fun with the whole Hall of Fame idea, and make it interactive to boot. I’m going to establish an O-fers Hall of Fame so that we, the members of the O-fers community, can discuss, argue and bicker over who deserves enshrinement. |
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