It took baseball a while to recognize Aparicio to Fox; will it take just as long to acknowledge Trammell to Whitaker?

Baseball fans of the Detroit Tigers are miffed these days. The Baseball Hall of Fame’s veterans committee acknowledged the list of ballplayers being considered for baseball’s version of immortality, and they see snub!

It took the baseball Hall of Fame some time to acknowledge their greatness

Back in the 1980s into the early 1990s, the strength of the team (including the year they won the World Series in 1984) was their middle infield combo of shortstop Alan Trammell to second baseman Lou Whitaker.

ONLY A COMPLETE fool (and yes, there are baseball fans who are incredibly foolish) doesn’t acknowledge they were stars of that era – and one of the best middle-infield combos to ever exist.

Yet the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to date, hasn’t thought much of either. The veterans committee this year said it will reconsider the chances of Trammell.

But forget about Whitaker. He’s still out!

There were fans who have long been outraged about what has become of Whitaker – who only got one crack at the Hall of Fame ballot back in 2001, and only got 2.9 percent of the vote. Far less than the 75 percent vote required for enshrinement, and also less than the 5 percent minimum required to be considered again in future years by sportswriters.

Is Lou getting the 'Nellie Fox' treatment?

TIGERS FANS HAVE thought this was a moment of terminal stupidity that would someday be fixed by a veterans’ committee. Except that it’s not so.

There were the people building their hopes on the idea that Whitaker would get consideration, and saw a certain sense of perfection if it were to happen that Whitaker and Trammell (one of the longest-running middle-infield combos ever from 1977 to 1993) would get inducted together.

That could happen in the future, if Trammell gets passed over this year and the two get reconsidered again in the future. Regardless of how long in the future it takes for that to occur.

Could Mickey Klutts share card w/ 2 HoFers? 

I’m wondering if Trammell to Whitaker is destined to become a 21^st Century equivalent of the Chicago White Sox’ great middle infield combo of the 1950s. You know shortstop Luis Aparicio to second baseman Nellie Fox -- the stars at the top of the 1959 American League championship ball club?

NOWADAYS, Aparicio to Fox is a Hall of Fame duo. It seems ridiculous that the two weren’t a shoo-in for induction, and that they didn’t get in as a pair.

But they didn’t.

Aparicio became the first Venezuelan-born ballplayer elected to the Hall of Fame when he was inducted in 1984, which was about a decade after he retired as a ballplayer and after about five years on the ballot.

Is Nellie any less a baseball immortal because of wait?

Yet he was the downright easy choice compared to Fox. Who one year after Aparicio’s induction came up for his final crack at induction on the sportswriters’ ballot – that was the one where he got 74.6 percent support, which rounds off to 75 percent. But Hall of Fame officials claimed he needed a pure 75 percent vote – and was two votes short as a result.

FOX EVENTUALLY FELL to the veterans’ committee to review, and they wound up inducting him in 1997. It took awhile (and Fox was long deceased, having died from skin cancer in 1975, a complication to those tobacco chaws he was oft noted for), but it eventually happened.

Is that what’s likely to occur for the baseball brethren in Detroit?

Sox duo immortalized in bronze at 35th St. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Could Whitaker, now 60, wind up having to wait many, many years before he finally gets his image in bronze, hanging from a hall in upstate New York? Could it wind up being his grand-children who wind up speaking on his behalf to his greatness?

And when it winds up happening someday, will it not seem like such a big deal? Because in the end, all of those bronze images freeze over – and these are the kind of details that get lost to future generations. As both Fox and Whitaker will wind up being remembered among the best second basemen ever.

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Lone Chgo chance at Hall of Fame inductee?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The only Chicago-connections ballplayer being considered by the veterans committee is Tommy John, who pitched for more than two decades – including in the late 1960s for the White Sox. No former Cubs are under consideration, although I suppose Cubs fans could remember that home run Steve Garvey hit in the National League playoffs that helped cost the Cubs the league championship in 1984 – the year that Whitaker/Trammell led their Tigers to the ultimate World Series title.

EXTRA: Ryne a Phillie or a Cubbie?

RYNO: The Phillie-in-training

Ryne Sandberg is a product of the Philadelphia Phillies organization.

He signed out of North Central High School in Spokane, Wash., back in 1978, played with assorted Phillies minor league affiliates and got in his first major league appearances with Philadelphia near the end of the 1981 season (one hit in six at-bats, 13 games played overall).

AND ON FRIDAY, the Philadelphia National League ball club named the 53-year-old Sandberg as their new manager. He gets to finish out the season, which thus far hasn’t been much better than either of the Chicago ball clubs.
 

RYNO: The Cubbie all-star

Sandberg finally gets to achieve his dream of being manager of a major league ball club. It would seem that the Phillies can claim to have promoted one of their own to the top spot – someone who has been with the organization at every level.

If only it weren’t for those couple of decades that Sandberg spent with the Chicago Cubs – both as an infielder whose play was good enough to get him into the Baseball Hall of Fame and as a manager of Cubs minor league affiliates. Maybe we can pretend the “Cubs” never happened! Although acquiring Sandberg as a minor league throw-in to balance out a trade of aging Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa for younger Cubs shortstop Ivan Dejesus was one of the few times the Cubs did something right!

Yes, there are those Cubs fans on Friday who are disgusted that one of their favorite team’s most popular ballplayers is now in charge of another team – and that they’ll have to see him as “the enemy” when the Phillies come to Chicago Aug. 30-Sept. 1.


TRAMMELL & WHITAKER: Ought to be in Hall

PARTICULARLY SINCE SANDBERG made it clear during his time in Chicago he wanted to be manager of the Chicago Cubs, which the new ownership made it clear they wanted no part of.

Could Sandberg really have been any worse than Herman Franks, Jim Essian or Jim Lefebvre in terms of leading the Cubs to dismal won-loss records? Probably not.

But there is one reason that Sandberg probably is better off never having been responsible for the home team lineup card at Wrigley Field. He would have had a lot of losses to his record, and that could have diminished his reputation.


VENTURA: Was '12 or '13 the fluke?

Just think of Alan Trammell, the one-time Detroit Tigers shortstop whom some fans think also belongs in the Hall of Fame (along with his counterpart second baseman Lou Whitaker).

HE LATER GOT a chance to manage the Tigers for three seasons – including that atrocious season in Detroit when the Tigers lost 119 games Which ought to put the trashy seasons we’re seeing this year in Chicago into perspective; one-time White Sox third baseman-turned-manager Robin Ventura isn't anywhere near as awful this season, and was far better last year.

How many Tigers fans can reminisce about Trammell and the ‘80s teams (a World Series victory in ’84 and a division title in ’87) without also remembering the year their team came within a single game of losing more than the 1962 New York Mets?

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