Quote:
Originally Posted by oldjudge
Rob--The best he ever finished in a 22 year career was third in the Cy Young voting; he was in the top ten only four times and an All Star only twice. In eight of twenty-two seasons he was at or below .500 in W/L %. He won twenty games only once, but lost seventeen games four times. He was a very good pitcher, not a HOF pitcher.
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He was a very, very good pitcher for a very, very long time. When you make your league's yearly top 10 list a collective 60+ times in the categories of wins, complete games, innings, strikeouts, shutouts and ERA, and win 287 games despite support of 2 or fewer runs in over 1/3 of your career starts, and finish your career 3rd in career strikeouts and 9th in shutouts, I think you go into the Hall.
Whenever the HOF becomes a place only for the
greatest of the greats, then I'd be the first to vote Bert back out (along with 50-75 others).
Anyways, I'm very happy for Bert - I've had the pleasure of chatting with him, and followed his career from the very beginning, listening to his first start on the radio back in 1970. I aspired to be a pro baseball player at the time, and thought it was just too cool that a teenager just a few years older than me was pitching for my local team.