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davidcyclebackI think armchair baseball historians rely too much on batting statistics, or are unable to imagine that anything exists beyond batting statistics. Albert Belle had clearly better hitting statistics than Ozzie Smith, but I'd take Smith over Belle for my team any day.
The intagibles (leadership, good teammate, fielding aspects, running hard to first base, etc) may dissapear from view over time, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. A player's teammates, managers and contemoraries will have more insight into the non statistical aspects of a player, which is I give much weight to what the player's contemporaries thought.
Those who say Ozzie Smith should not be in the Hall of Fame because his slugging percentage is nothing like Mark McGwire's (and it isn't) are examples of folks who can type in baseball-reference.com but are otherwise clueless about the game ... Dan Marino was a mighty fine quarterback and put up some awesome numbers, but if your football dream team was made up of 22 cloned Dan Marinos you'd be blown out of every game you played. After the first half of the first game, you'd be begging for the local junior high player to replace Marino at cornerback ... Simularly, there was a reason Ozzie Smith played at shortstop and McGwire at first. And it had nothing to do with their home run totals.
12-03-2005, 08:55 PM
Why is Joe Tinker in the HOF
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