612 or 609 – are 3 home runs really the difference for baseball’s Hall of Fame?

Chicago ballplayer likely to get into Hall

In just over a week, the Baseball Hall of Fame will announce which ballplayers of the 1990s will be the newest inductees for immortalization with a bronze plaque at their museum in upstate New York.

Based on some of the information that has come out thus far, one-time Chicago White Sox slugger Jim Thome will be among the inductees. It seems the 612 home runs he hit during a nearly two-decade career are enough for him to be considered one of the game’s all-time greats.

The one who likely won't

YET AMONGST THE other ballplayers up for Hall of Fame consideration is one-time Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa – the man with 609 career home runs and the only ballplayer ever with three seasons of 60 or more home runs.

If you look solely at the statistics and take nothing else into account, the two of them ought to be comparable. In fact, one could make an argument that Sosa was far more significant to the Cubs than Thome was to the White Sox.

Thome may well have have hit his 500^th home run while wearing the White Sox uniform, but Sosa had 545 of his home runs in the baby blue of the Cubbies.

The way Cubs fans will spin Thome

Sosa was also a major player in that 1998 season where he and St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire gave baseball fans a show many will forevermore remember as they pursued the single-season record for home runs. Then, they followed it up with an encore in 1999.

YET AS FAR as the Hall of Fame is concerned, the question will be by how far Thome exceeds the 75 percent of sportswriters with a ballot who support his candidacy.

A bigger question will be whether this is the year that Sosa finally falls below 5 percent support (he was just over 8 percent last year), which is the level at which he gets knocked off the ballot.

Or are there just enough people with pleasant memories of Sosa’s clownish on-field behavior that he’ll live on for another year’s consideration?

Sosa, of course, is the ballplayer who is tainted by the perception that he was among the ballplayers of the 1990s who used anabolic steroids to bolster himself.

Sox fans have tried to forget this happened

WHICH HAS MANY fans thinking of him as being the equivalent of one-time pitcher Roger Clemens and slugger Barry Bonds – two other stars whose statistics would have one think they’re shoo-ins for Cooperstown admittance.

I’m sure Cubs fans are going to go through their own squirming routines when the final Hall of Fame results are announced Jan. 24. They’re going to hate the notion that a White Sox player will get top honors, whereas the man whom they once thought of as becoming the new “Mr. Cub” (replacing Ernie Banks in that niche) remains a baseball “nothing.”

White Sox fans, of course, will snicker at that notion, particularly since White Sox fans were on to the notion that there was something phony about Sosa back when Cubs fans were proclaiming him as the ultimate evidence of their ball club’s superiority.

Of course, Thome isn’t really a part of the White Sox story, even if he played a few seasons in Chicago (and is a Peoria native who grew up rooting for the Cubs and the home run antics of Dave Kingman). I’m sure that when he gets Hall of Fame induction, he’ll be remembered primarily for his contributions to those Cleveland Indians teams that won league championships in 1995 and 1997 and were generally among the American League’s better teams of the ‘90’s.

Thome surpassed his childhood idol

I’M WONDERING HOW much the Cubbie types will want to insist Thome is only an Indian, and that Chicago has no claim to them. Of course, White Sox fans will forevermore have Sosa to sling at Cubs fans when they get cocky about the fact they actually managed to pull off one lone championship a couple of years ago.

Sosa is a millstone to the Cubs, which is why he hasn’t already had his moment of immortalization a few years ago – even though he is without a doubt one of the best ballplayers from the Dominican Republic to play professional ball in this country.

Even Cubs management say they can’t fully embrace his place in their legacy until he comes forth with the “truth” about whether he used steroids to bolster his strength artificially.

Something that Thome has never had to address. Which goes a long way to explain how two one-dimensional sluggers who are only 3 home runs apart will be remembered so differently.

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Saying “yes” to DH an easier decision to make than picking a president

The presidential caucuses in Iowa are fast approaching, as is the New Hampshire primaries. Yet I remain clueless as to who I can seriously say I support for president.

Almost a 3,000-hit player due to DH

I think many of the Republican hopefuls are offensive, while the Democratic dreamers of White House glory are either clueless or ever so mediocre. Although I believe the Des Moines Register’s picks for president (Dem Hillary Clinton and GOPer Marco Rubio) are fairly safe and predictable choices.

SO AT A time when I feel like I ought to be making up my mind about something, I find my mind shifting to baseball.

Not only because spring training is rapidly approaching (Feb. 19 for the Chicago White Sox and Feb. 20 for the Chicago Cubs) and I’m anxious to have springtime-like weather, but also because at least baseball gives us an obvious choice.

Even though I’m sure my pick will wind up upsetting people even more than any political pick I might make – bring the designated hitter to the National League.

It’s about time that move was made and that the National League get off its high horse thinking it somehow is superior because it can’t get with the program that all the rest of professional baseball (except the Pacific League in Japan) follows.

FOR THOSE WHO are clueless as to the joy of baseball, the designated hitter was a measure created back in 1973 by American League teams (including the White Sox) where someone else hits for the pitcher – which throughout the history of baseball has been a spot in the line-up that weakens the offense.

There are those fans of National League teams (including the Chicago Cubs) who think this somehow is an aberration, even though I’d argue the Cubs’ play throughout the decades is the bigger aberration to baseball. It can become a heated argument.


DH extended career to Hall of Fame

One that will become even more intense in coming months because there is speculation that the National League will adopt the DH soon – possibly as soon as the 2017 season.

Baseball Commissioner Fred Manfred said last week the change could be made because there is a new generation of National League team owners – ones who think the designated hitter just makes too much sense to not have. In short, the old-liners who want to think they’re better off without it aren’t strong enough t resist the modern day.

THAT INCLUDES HAVING another big bat in the line-up, often one upon which the entire ball club is based around. As for those who think removing a weak-hitting pitcher in the late innings of a ballgame for a pinch hitter is evidence of great strategy, I’d say those people probably get excited seeing a frustrated ball player smash a water cooler.
 

Cubs better off if he'd been a DH

Will he ruin it beyond repair? Or just put a few dents in it that future generations of ballplayers will marvel over?

To me, at least, watching a National League game always feels like there’s a gap that pops up every few innings when the pitcher has to come up to bat. A gap that just doesn’t occur when watching an American League team play.

In short, all the talk of “strategy” offered up by National League fans is a batch of hooey! Way too overblown to take seriously.

SINCE THE PEOPLE who now lead baseball are determined to erase the differences between American and National league ball clubs to make one overall professional league in the United States, having the designated hitter in one league while denying its existence in the other just seems silly.

Now I don’t know if the designated hitter really is coming to the Chicago Cubs and other National League teams next season. I don’t doubt there will be some fans who won’t stop complaining until they’re planted in the ground with a headstone atop them. Even then, their spirits will probably haunt us to complain.


Even Hillary has a bubble-gum card

But it’s bound to happen. And if it winds up getting approved some time during 2016, it could be the most controversial action of the year.

Because I suspect that some people will find the idea of the Chicago Cubs or Pittsburgh Pirates having a designated hitter even more offensive than the concept of the oath of office being administered early next year to “President Hillary R. Clinton.”

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EXTRA: What would Paul Reuschel hot dog be? Biittner or Jose Cardenal?

It seems that Doug Sohn is a 1970s-era Chicago Cubs fan. How else to explain the fact that the one-time operator of the Hot Doug’s hot dog stand is now serving up products at Wrigley Field named for Cubs ballplayers of that era.

The Carmen Fanzone? A Vienna Beef polish sausage with brown mustard and carmelized onions. Personally, I think there should be a trumpet riff played whenever anyone buys one.



Yes, Paul and Rick were transposed

THE RICK REUSCHEL? Pork sausage with chipotle mustard and pepper jack cheese. Which makes me wonder what a hot dog named for his brother, Paul, would be; perhaps a foot-long with double the same ingredients to acknowledge the girth.

The Dave Kingman? Bacon cheeseburger sausage with cola-barbecue sauce and sharp cheddar cheese. Of course, you’d have to put something unexpected in it to give it a sharp, off-beat and nasty taste – just like Kingman’s personality!

Considering that hot dogs at Wrigley Field have never been anything special (the polish sausage served up to Chicago White Sox fans at U.S. Cellular Field tops anything the Cubs have ever offered to go along with all that Old Style Beer consumed throughout the years), it’s interesting to see something different offered up.

Although I don't know much about these new products, other than that they were first offered Friday and were probably the most interesting aspect of the Cubs' loss to the Miami Marlins. Better later than never, I suppose. Because it seems that the 21st Century sports stadium has become more about the concessions it offers, rather than the activity that takes place on the playing field.

AT $9 APIECE, these hot dogs aren't exactly something we can indulge in too many of. Back in the 1970s, that $9 would have paid for a ticket AND concessions for a person to attend a ballgame.  For the record, Sohn says he plans to rotate the offerings – there will be other variations of sausages on a bun that will be named for other Cubs players of that era.

Which means there had better be a Jose Cardenal (although the idea of the traditional Cuban hot dog that includes ham, Swiss cheese, dill pickles, prosciutto and mayonnaise -- a variation of the famed Cuban sandwich -- isn’t that appealing) included in the very near future.

Although if they really want to get off-beat, they’d offer up a Larry Biittner. I'm not sure what kind of sausage it would be, but it ought to come with some sort of a discount for any fan who can actually spell the one-time outfielder’s name correctly!
 

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