Lincicome: Voter's Rose-colored glasses have old tint

Published December 14, 2005 at midnight

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The baseball Hall of Fame ballot mocks me. Of the 29 names, at least a half-dozen are elusive, though I am sure that Gregg Jefferies and Doug Jones and Gary DiSarcina were worthy baseball players. Still, I cannot draw an image of them doing whatever they did to deserve to be considered when, not to beat a whipped dog, Pete Rose is not.

I consider myself a conscientious elector and have taken my franchise seriously since it first came to me, oh, how long has it been, a couple of decades now?

I used to think I knew a Hall of Fame player when I saw one, even as I was seeing one for the first time, a notion that came to me the first time I saw Dwight Gooden pitch. It is his fault and not mine that he squandered his gifts, as did Darryl Strawberry, to name another.

I see Gooden on the ballot for the first time. I shall not give him my vote.

No one can vote on what might have been, and not to keep pounding on the Rose disgrace, but Rose's numbers were all totaled before his shame came.

A famous Rose story is that, when he was with the Phillies, I think, the team plane went into some rough air, and panic rolled down the aisles. Rose stood up and shouted, "We're going down, and I'm the only one taking a .340 average with me."

The conscience gripper that Rose became for the writers is over because, now 15 years after he should have been eligible, Rose no longer is eligible. Talk about your Catch-22, or Catch-15 to give it the proper number.

We were never allowed to vote for Rose and now we are told we can't even if any of us had the courage to do so. And not to condemn the courage of the press in this matter, but any vote for Rose would not have been counted anyhow.

So now the Rose problem is the problem of the veterans committee, even stricter in these things than writers. For example, they will not vote in Ron Santo or Joe Torre, the most solid of solid citizens, so what chance does Rose ever have now?

But, back to this year's ballot. I see names I have in the past voted for - Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage, Andre Dawson - and so I shall again, and with more conviction than before.

What has changed since I started doing this, as when I voted for no one the year Willie Stargell was the only inductee, is the standard that must be met to be a Hall of Famer.

Or, rather, I should say, the standard has reverted to an honest standard, rather than the inflated ones that have seemed to matter in the Age Of Steroids.

Whereas the career of Rice appears marginal compared to the more recent whompers of the baseball like Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire (eligible next year), it stacks up just fine with Rice's own contemporaries.

The same is true of Dawson, and it is not necessary to be aware of how the cement rug in Montreal ruined Dawson's knees before he ever got to the Cubs and beyond.

What you believe about almost everyone but Dave Parker, on the ballot for the 10th year but still, like Gooden and Strawberry and Paul Molitor (who overcame it) with that recreational drug scar on his résumé, is that these guys did it all naturally.

You wonder what Dawson might have done on steroids, whether those 438 home runs would have been 638, or how much harder could one man throw the ball from right field to third base.

Steve Garvey's numbers appear still too puny for a Hall of Fame vote, as do Don Mattingly's, but the tug is there to give them a break since these two and Dawson and Dale Murphy ought to be considered on raw decency alone.

As for the pitchers, I have voted for Jack Morris before and will again, despite the fact Morris was a Bonds-sized jerk, and probably Bert Blyleven as well, he with 60 shutouts, a clear Hall of Fame standard.

No to Albert Belle, and to Will Clark, both on the ballot for the first time, as well as all the other first-timers. This year a first-timer will not make it, so I do not have to repeat my argument about degrees of the honor, that a first-time inductee has to be especially special, as may be Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn next year.

So, let's mark the ballot, arranged conveniently in alphabetical order: Blyleven, Dawson, Garvey, Gossage, Mattingly, Morris, Murphy, Rice, Sutter. That's nine.

I still have room for one more before I seal the envelope. I'll leave that blank for Rose.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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